4 Methods to Fix Corrupted Hard Drive on Windows 10/11

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:19 Recover data from corrupted HDD
02:35 Method 1: Try different devices
03:10 Method 2: Run CHKDSK
04:09 Method 3: Using the repair tool
05:46 Method 4: Format your drive
06:56 Conclusion

An important preemptive way to protect your data before any repair procedures is using file recovery tool such as Disk Drill, to essentially give us the best chance of recovering our data and restoring drive functionality. I use Disk Drill for these scenarios all the time. It's fast, easy to use, and extremely reliable. And with the Windows Edition downloaded from the link in the description, you can recover up to 500 megabytes of files for free.

📌 To recover data from a corrupted hard drive:
1. Download and install Disk Drill.
2. Select the drive or partition that is corrupted.
3. Click the Search for lost data button to initiate scanning.
4. Once the scan is finished, select the files (photos, music files, videos, documents, etc.) you wish to restore and click Recover.
5. Choose a recovery location. Make sure that your recovery location is not your corrupted drive or partition.
6. Click next to recover data from a corrupted hard drive.

Now with your data hopefully a little more secure, let's move on to the remaining three methods that will hopefully be able to restore the functionality of your drive once and for all.

Method 1: Test your drive on different devices
So first off, starting simple, just try a new device, and know I don't mean a new drive, I mean a new computer, a new cable, just something that's going to break the chain to see if it maybe isn't even your hard drive. It might just be a computer or a bad cable or something that makes it seem like the drive itself is the problem when in reality it's something totally unrelated.

Method 2: Run the error-checking command
Next on, we are going to try a PowerShell and CMD command called check disk. So simply put, this is a command that will analyze a given disk for directory or file system errors and correct them if possible. That is also a reliable way to fix a corrupted external hard drive without formatting.

To repair a corrupted hard drive using CMD:
1. Right-click Start and click Windows PowerShell (Admin). If prompted to allow access by UAC, click Yes.
2. Type chkdsk E: /r. Replace E: with the drive letter of your corrupted hard drive. Press Enter.
This command can take some time to complete if your hard drive is large in size.

Method 3: Using the hard drive repair tool
The other method is relatively new to me, but one that I've been very pleased with and that is actually another piece of software called Victoria 911. So without getting too technical, Victoria 911 actually differs a little bit from the aforementioned Disk Drill in its core functionality, being that this software is really meant to fix internal drive errors, whereas Disk Drill is meant to actually recover files.

To fix a corrupted hard drive using Victoria911:
1. Download Victoria911 and extract the files. Open it.
2. Click Test & Repair.
3. Make sure the scan is set to Read and Ignore. Press Scan.
4. Upon completion, you can choose to remap bad sectors by clicking Remap and performing another scan.

Method 4:
The last thing that I just wanted to throw in here is formatting. But even within formatting, there are two separate methods that you can use that may actually lend better to your situation than the other. So the first would be a quick format. And what this does is erases your partition table, but there is the chance to fix such errors as "file directory is corrupted or unreadable" and to perform hard drive data recovery.
However, there is also a second option called full format. And at this point, it is beyond saving. If you enable full format and you format the drive with that option, it will essentially reset all of the sectors and pretty much set everything back to zero to where there is no chance of recovering data at all. But that is the best likelihood of fixing your drive and restoring all of your functionality. So it really just depends on how valuable the drive is versus how valuable the files are.

🟢 GUIDES

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#HardDrive

[Tho]

Thank you for giving this insight into software thats actually helping 🙏

[Ldydi]

Hello, I need help locating the Victoria 911 link.

[killerslayz]

Hey I used powershell to help fix corrupted files, it found all of the files that need fixing however it is stuck on 0% and hasn’t gone up in 20 minutes. Any help? Thank you

[drephawnmckinneyjr]

What do I do if I can’t even boot windows and I don’t have another computer and my is just not working at all.

[conandude]

Cannot open volume for direct access. Yeha, chkdsk just as useless as always. every other answer, buy 3rd party software and just hope it can fix the problem.

[Zendie]

Note to self: back up any data on to another drive

[RoshFragger]

Extremely thankful to you. The CHKDSK method worked. Thanks so much for saving my data from this potentially corrupted HDD. God bless you.

[dariak]

Thank you for the tutorial. I was able to restore some important files form my corrupted hard disk.

[ignasiuspalma]

thank you bro !!! i have this problem with corrupted disk for past year thank you so much. You're a god send

[XerosFn]

my disk shows in diskpart list but not in the files

[andrewysk]

Andrew, how long does it typically take for Disk Drill to scan a corrupted hard drive? I have a pretty large drive and I'm wondering if it's going to take hours or even days to complete. I also never heard of Victoria 911 before but it sounds sick! Gonna try it out next time my drive goes down. Thanks for putting me onto this new software!

[anchanz]

windows powershell works like a charm, thanks

[elpibeheyzoos]

so far there are like 28 different errors...this Victoria thing is looking promising

[Joshualt]

I am not sure what has happened but yesterday evening my external 4TB driver had randomly corrupted or stopped working. I thought at first my PC was broken but it turns out it's my external drive. I tried everything you said to do but nothing has worked or helped. When I plug in the external drive it slows down my PC really bad, like a software malfunction type of thing and it doesn't even show like a blue or red bar or the storage on my folders where you can see the storage etc. I tried using the apps and everything but it doesn't even come up there, it makes my PC run so SLOW that it doesn't even load the drive. I am so upset because I have lost over 4TB of data that I really needed and I just don't get what caused this... do you have any idea what issue I could have or has my drive just actually broken completely?

[gbaca]

its a internal harddrive not external. It is not showing up at all. not in diskmanagement. not in diskpart . not in list volume? i cant get windows to use it. thanks

[johnreyq]

I plugged in my Seagate external drive and it is working making the plug in sound. But i cannot find it in file explorer or in disk management... Only in device manager under disk drives.

[allmightjr]

hi! i wanted to ask, my hard drive had a cyclic redundancy issue, and i tried with victoria and cmd and no sucess.. i ended up formating it and loosing my important 118gb rar, im trying to recover it with disk drill, but it only found 30mb of it and has been 4 days and it stills on the 62%, it goes very slow... is there a way to fix this? make it faster, any other way to recover my file..dunno, anything that can help would be apreciated, thanks in advance

[sumitnamdeo]

Brooo...😭I tried to connect my old SSD using external item, it's showing the drive and showing online too. But it's the drive is opening and showing "the drive is not accessible, incorrect function". When I'm trying to "chkdsk" it in cmd its showing "volume not found". It's not even showing any storage in Disk Management just showing "removeable" and "online" only. What should i do now I'm clueless.

[nathanjames]

What if the computer won't start when the drive is plugged in?

[miss_sara]

pnp i need to pay i just wanted to recover my stuff ones damit