hi there.

im trying to access my portabe hard drive but im getting a message saying

'':I is not accessible.
the file or diractory is corrupted and unreadable''

i dont know what to do i bought the hard drive to transfer very important data from my pc and now it seemed like i lost it.

i tried using the disk error checking tool but once i click both boxes and press start it wont do anything. and i tried running it from the comant prompt but it still doesnt do anything???

plz plz plz help me out here i have exams coming up and my work is on that drive.

Hello Khalid, welcome to PCHF.

Doesn't sound good Khalid, was the disk disconnected at any time whilst it was still running? Can you try the disk on another PC?

i dissconected it while it was connected but that shouldnt be a problem because the HD is optmized for quick removal. the edject button or the safely romove hard drive doesnt come up.

this happend to me once before but i just checked for errors and it fixed it all for me.

P.S also when i highlight the Drive or click on properties it says 0 kb Free 0 kb avaiable???

its a toshiba 120 GB by the way.

Khalid, if it's just the data on your external drive, that will rule out everything as the cause, except for HDD failure, or corrupt data. If you remove the drive (optemized or not), whilst data is being accessed, your data will become corrupt. When removing your HDD, make sure the HDD light has stopped flashing, and use the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in the system tray. Also, make sure you take regular backups of your important data.

Khalid, the recovery of a corrupt drive, completely depends on how desperate you are to retrieve your data, how much time you have and how much you can afford. The best software product I've found is called R-Studio (Disk Recovery Software and Hard Drive Recovery tool for Windows). Alternatively, you can send your HDD off to a data recovery specialist (Removable Media Data Recovery - Intellirecovery.com). You may be able to find cheaper. Data recovery companies generally charge a little bit more, take a little longer to return, however the recovery rate is normally much better.

EDIT: Marked as Answered.