External hard disk does not open, asks to format - what to do

An external hard drive is a compact device that allows you to store copies of data, transfer a large amount of information from one device to another. Its advantage is that the external HDD uses a USB interface, so it is easy to connect it to any PC, laptop or even tablet. For all other characteristics, it looks like a regular computer hard drive.

Having received all the advantages of a conventional hard drive, he inherited his disadvantages. Sometimes you may encounter the following problem when using an external HDD: disk access is impossible and its formatting is required . After reading this article, you can learn about the causes of the problem and how to cope with it, if the external hard drive does not open, asks to format.

File system

To organize and store information on any storage device (hard drive, flash drive, external hard drive), a set of special rules are needed that determine in what place and in what way it will be stored. In fact, it is a set of software tools that provide access to information for various applications in a convenient way. The most popular file system today is NTFS . It is used on external hard drives.

Missing or corrupted file system

If you view information about the external disk, access to which is denied and you want to format it, you can see that instead of NTFS its file system has become RAW. This means that there is no file system on the disk or it is damaged. The data itself most often remains intact. Not many people know that in addition to the files themselves, special identifiers of files are stored on the HDD, containing information about the type of file, its size and other attributes. This way of organizing data storage can be compared with a table in which there is a key and the data itself, which can be accessed by a specific identifier. If the key column disappears, it will be very difficult to access specific information. The same happens in the case when the disk file system is damaged.

Ways to solve the problem when the external hard drive does not open

The easiest way to return the file system to an external drive is to use the standard CHKDSK command.

1. To do this, you need to run the command line (Windows + R, in the input field type “cmd” and click “Run”).
2. In the console that opens, write the command “CHKDSK disk_name: / f”, where disk_name is the name of the disk with the RAW file system.
3. This command will help to deal with minor damage to the file system, but there are risks of losing some data.

There are applications that allow you to restore the file system on the disk. One of the most popular is GetDataBack. With this help, you can recover all data without loss.

If the first two methods did not work in the solution “External hard disk does not open, requests formatting”, and you have to format the hard disk, you can read the full list of formatting methods in the excellent article http://sdelaicomp.ru/nastrojka-sistemy/sposoby-formatirovaniya -zhestkogo-diska.html . Fast formatting does not result in data loss. Information in the form of zeros and ones remains on the disk, but access to it is lost. However, there are applications that allow you to recover data after formatting, so you should not despair.

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