What can I do if my external hard drive is corrupted?

An external hard drive unlike an internal disk, has a specific - it is wrapped into an enclosure which is an additional component to fail.

If you can't get access to the external drive, first, go to Disk Management. If you see the drive in there, the most probable reason of failure is a logical failure and formatting can help. But before formatting you need to recover data. Read more about how to do this at this page.

If the drive isn't displayed there, you can try to remove the enclosure and connect the drive to the PC via USB-to-SATA cable. Nevertheless, before doing that you should think twice: first, enclosure removal voids the warranty and modern external drives are designed in such way that it is almost impossible to disassemble them without a trace. Second, some drives have a built-in USB-to-SATA controller that can't be disconnected. So, before disassembling the drive think if your drive is still under the warranty and if it is possible to disconnect the controller from your drive model.

In addition to logical and enclosure failures, there could be physical damage, especially if your drive has fallen recently or suffered from external influence. Just as an internal drive, mechanical damage should be fixed by technicians in a data recovery lab.

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