A damaged hard drive is one of the worst crises every user has to face sooner or later. If the problem is physical, there is not much you can do without a big budget, but when the damage is logical, there is still a glimmer of hope. Fortunately, Windows has basic tools to bring that drive back from the darkness, but if that is not enough, the Web offers several free programs. Today we will teach you how to use them.
It is inevitable: when a hard drive starts playing its ominous “clack, clack, clack”, it means its adventure has come to an end. The mechanical nature of a hard drive implies a limit on its lifespan, and the user must be prepared. Still, on many occasions specific symptoms appear. Files that vanish into thin air, inaccessible folders, and missing partitions are clear examples of logical damage that could soon become physical. If you are suffering any of these problems today, do not despair, because there are a couple of things to try before throwing in the towel. The odyssey begins with the command “Chkdsk”:
Using Chkdsk to Repair Damaged Drives
- Click on the Start button, type cmd to invoke the Command Prompt window (cmd.exe), right-click on the icon and choose “Run as administrator”. This will open a new command prompt window with elevated privileges, exactly what Chkdsk needs.
- Type chkdsk x: /r, where the letter “x” is actually the letter of the drive to verify. For example, if the problem is on drive D, the exact command is chkdsk d: /r. If it is the system drive (usually C:), Chkdsk will ask you to restart the system because it needs exclusive access. If so, answer “yes” and restart the computer.
- Patience. The /r switch in Chkdsk not only checks files and indexes on the hard drive, but also does the same work on free sectors, and on sectors that were previously marked as damaged. This can take a couple of hours on average, and if there are many errors to fix, Chkdsk will take its time.
- Once the operation is done, check if you can access the affected files and folders. If the content is there, make a backup immediately. Recovery via Chkdsk does not always mean a permanent solution, and if the hard drive health is severely deteriorated, the same thing may happen again.
That’s all about Chkdsk. Now, what can we do when the problem extends to an entire partition? A free and quite easy to use program is EaseUS Partition Recovery.
Recovering a Partition with EaseUS Partition Recovery
- Download and install a copy on your computer, and choose the Partition Recovery option.
- Choose the hard drive with the affected partition, and click Next.
- The program will ask for the search area. “Entire Disk” is the safest option.
- EaseUS Partition Recovery has two scanning methods: Fast and Complete. It is recommended to start with Fast, and if the results are negative, the program will offer to repeat the job in Complete.
- If all goes well, the lost partition will appear in the list. Click on it and proceed with the recovery.
Once again: Recovery does not mean repair. If you manage to restore access to your data, make a backup. A damaged hard drive will not take the trouble to warn you twice. Good luck!
