Hard drive asking to be formatted but i need my data

[al-awn]

Okay this is probably a simple enough problem, and one that has been asked a million times over...

Basically my external hard drive has suddenly stopped working properly. its freezing up when i 'explore' it and i cant get to any of the files stored on it. the explorer stops responding after clicking into at most two folders.

Then a notifaction box pops up saying... "disk is not formatted. format it now?"


I cant format it because i REALLY REALLY dont want to lose the data on it. please tell me theres a simple way i can just fix it please!!

Iv had a little browse around and iv heard something about 'testDisk' or something. iv downloaded it but dont really know what im doing with it.


Can someone please direct me to what i must do to retrieve my data???????

[pip22]

Go here for Testdisk tutorial: TestDisk Step By Step - CGSecurity

Be advised that it's never a good idea to store valuable data on only one hard drive, especially when it's an external drive since they are more prone to early failure than internal ones. You should put your data on at least two drives and keep them synchronised regularly, otherwise you don't have any backups and that is just asking for trouble.

[al-awn]

Iv had a look but its making absolutely no sense to me. :(

Could someone just walk me through what i need to do, and put it in simple terms cos i dont know much of this techy stuff.

If it makes it any easier, i only have one partition in my drive...??

[Networks]

Download R-Studio Disk Recovery Software and Hard Drive Recovery tool for Windows run it in demo mode scan the drive see if it can find the data if yes then pay for software and save to another drive. R-Studio has almost step by step help in the program and in the support portal. If that turns out to be too difficult then you may want to seek a pro to recover the drive. Many on here have been successful with r-studio its a good program.