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How to re-access my documents from an unformatted drive?
I hope I come to the right place for posting my question!
Recently, I have got a really strange external hard drive problem. Every time I tried to use it on my dell laptop, the computer would give me an error message and ask me to format it at first. But, this drive has held some newly made documents that have not been backed up timely. So, I cannot just format it immediately. Do you know any way for me to copy off these documents? I really need re-access them. Please, help me!
Abbott0029
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October 27th, 2013 20:00
The dread “drive not formatted” error message generally indicates hard drive problems. This can occur for many different reasons including a virus infection, hard drive problem, power surge, or problems with the operating system, etc. If you receive this type of error message, it is important that you act carefully to keep your important data safe.
1. Do NOT click "yes" to format the hard drive in case that the formatting process makes things worse.
2. Do NOT attempt to write anything new on this hard drive in case of any data loss.
3. Download an unformatted hard drive data recovery program to help you. In fact, there are many data recovery tools out there. But, no all of them could be efficient and useful enough. You should pay much attention to opt for a proper one.
So, if you are interested, you can firstly try some data recovery freeware available online that always work much more efficiently than some paid ones, such as Recuva, TestDisk and iCare Data Recovery Free, etc.
4. Save and back up all your restored data on a different hard drive in case of data recovery failure.
5. After the data recovery process, simply format this drive to see whether it can work functionally as before.
In the future, you should learn a lesson to be more careful about your data and always back it up well.
Philip_Yip
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October 25th, 2013 00:00
Try accessing them by using a Linux live bootable USB such as UBUNTU or Fedora:
http://philipyip.wordpress.com/dell-community-forums/
See page 378 of Windows Reinstallation Guide which uses Fedora. Note for a model sold with a Windows 8 system use a UBUNTU live bootable USB as it should be compatible with secure boot. I'm not sure if Fedora is valid for secure boot.
Archibald2697
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October 29th, 2013 20:00
Thank you for you nice answer! I have followed your steps and tried your data recovery freeware. They all work well, specially the last one that has restored all my data back successfully. Now, I have saved back both of my external hard drive and inner contained data. Thanks a lot!!!