Repair Damaged Hard Drive Without Formatting

Repair Damaged Hard Drive Without Formatting

Repair Damaged Hard Drive Without Formatting, Hard Drive (HDD) damage usually occurs due to a file system error that converts the Hard Drive to RAW. The error is usually caused by bad sectors, the system crashes. Usually the problem occurs in software or hardware, and sometimes due to total physical damage.

The simplest way to repair a damaged hard drive is to format it. However, this way the data we have is lost instantly.

So, in this post we are going to cover the steps that can fix the crash without formatting the drive. In other words, steps to repair a damaged hard disk without losing its data.

Causes of Damaged Hard Drive

When a drive is formatted with a file system like NTFS, FAT, or something else, it’s the same as creating a table where file records are stored. NTFS creates a Master File Table (MFT) while the FAT file system stores these records in a File Allocation Table (FAT). After formatting, each file you cut/copy/paste inserts records in the table.

So when the drive is connected to the system, the OS reads the file system table, displays the files and folders present along with the details fetched from the table. When this table is corrupted, the result is that the OS is unreadable and cannot recognize the file system and hence, shows the drive as RAW.

Steps to Repair a Damaged Hard Drive

Scan Using Antivirus

Connect the hard drive to the device and use antivirus tools that are often used. Perform a scan on the driver or system on the device. Because, a virus or malware can cause damage to the hard drive. If the antivirus scan is successful, it may be able to repair the damaged hard disk.

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Perform CHKDSK Scan

Performing this Scan is highly recommended for storage drives. It would be nice what if it was done even though it was not in a damaged state. CHKDSK flags corrupt sectors and prevents data corruption by fixing file system errors. Please see how to run the CHKDSK Scan command below:

  1. Open Command Prompt or commonly called CMD
  2. Make sure the faulty drive is connected to the system
  3. Then type chkdsk /r /f X : where X is the drive letter.
  4. Replace X with your corrupted drive letter and hit ‘Enter’.
  5. Wait for it to finish and then restart the PC to check if the drive is accessible.
  6. When you get a warning message on CMD, press ‘Y’ on the keyboard and then the ‘Enter’ key.

Doing SFC Scan

An SFC scan helps repair corrupt or missing Windows system files that can cause drive damage. The scan checks the integrity of system files and replaces corrupt or damaged system files with cached copies stored in the system.

To run an SFC scan, open a Command Prompt window and type sfc /scannow. If the drive is external, type sfc /SCANNOW /OFFBOOTDIR=c:\/OFFWINDIR=c:\windows. Replace the letter c: with the letter of your hard drive.

Wait for the scan to complete and then restart the system. Check if you can access the drive now and make sure the hard drive has been repaired.

Use Data Recovery Tool

It is very possible that the steps above fail to repair a damaged Hard Drive (HDD). Sometimes, the damage is severe, and the methods mentioned above can only fix some minor damage issues on the drive.

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However, data recovery software like Stellar Data Recovery and easeus data recovery. This application quickly recovers files from badly damaged and formatted hard drives or deleted partitions. Although Windows may not recognize a damaged Hard Drive as usable data. This software can support recovery from damaged hard drives (RAW).

Just follow the steps that use the software to get back data quickly. Now that you may have recovered data from a damaged hard drive, format the drive to repair it.

Go to Disk Management, format the drive RAW (damaged), then transfer the recovered data and see if you can access all the recovered data.

Finally, hopefully with the tutorial that we provide in this article, it can help solve the problems you are facing.

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