Hello Everyone,

I have a 320 GB Transcend External HDD. It has very important data of almost 270GB. My External harddisk was connected with laptop, when i started my laptop, windows XP automatically started onboot scandisk utility and it detected some bad clusters on the external Harddrive. I thought it will repair my harddisk so didn't cancel that. It took more than 8 hrs to complete this process. In the morning when i tried to access my HDD on my laptop system asked me to format the drive before use. I didn't format the disk as it will erase all the data. I tried to use this harddisk on other OS (Win7) however message remains same "Do you want to format the harddrive?"
Please help me fix this issue and recover this data. this harddisk has no physical damage also no virus problems.

PLEASE HELP ME FIX THIS.

REGARDS
GAURAV

After scandisk you have some issue now with your MBR or partition table on this one. You have two choices on this. One is to know hex editor and fix it and get back your data. Two is to do a raw recovery on this one and rename all your data on it. Raw recovery depending on what you use can not render the results that you want on this one. You can try to clone this drive to another one and use a program called test disk to see if it can repair this problem for you. If not then purchase either Rstudio or Winhex and start a raw recovery on this and get off your data. Then you can format your drive and use MHDD and see if there is a problem on this and you want to continue to use it or replace it.

_________________
Iorana Haraharaini

I have a bad news:
I am 99% sure, your drive HAVE physical damage. (on normal case, scandisk should finish in 1-5 minute, maybe half hour on huge storage with millions of files)

If your data is really important, don't play more with this dying drive, seek for professional help.
If you can accept (in mind) of loosing all your data, try to clone the drive to another and do raw recovery as Poehere suggested.

Janos

disk may not get physically damaged and Raw recovery will not be ideal option as data size is large besides there are better options to be tested before going to salvage mode ( raw recovery is only meant for severely corrupted file system cases)
I suggest following action considering this a critical data
This symtom is caused by file system corruption (mft crash) due to bad sectors.

1) Remove disk out of enclosure
2) Connect crashed disk and another bigger disk to desktop IDE/SATA port.
3) use good quality smps / power backup and 120mm fan to blow air on crashed disk.
4) purchase a dos based cloning tool and make raw clone of original disk.
5) If disk has fewer bad sectors cloned disk may not need further work and can be explorered like normal disk.
6) If error persists , you can recover data using commercial softwares.
7) If cloning stopped or disk is making noise or taking too much time , disk could have mechanical issues and need
pro intervention

if you are not having computer background take help of professional dr company in your region.
hope this helps

Thank very much all your responses. I have decided to hand it over to the professional for help.