Sep 23, 2024 • Filed to: Answer Hard Drive Problems • Proven solutions
Admit it! You all have been through a corrupted or damaged external hard drive at some point. No doubt external hard drives are a pretty useful tool for people who often find it challenging to organize their data. But facing data corruption or errors with the hard drive can lead to great disappointment.
Nevertheless, every problem comes with a solution, and a corrupted hard drive is no exception. You can use Windows build-in Command Prompt to repair a hard disk in different types of scenarios. For example, suppose you are a Windows 7 user and are not inclined towards downloading extra third-party software to get the hard drive repaired, then using the command prompt will the best option to go for.
So, if that’s the case with you too, continue reading further to discover how to repair an external hard drive using CMD in a Windows system.
If you’ve never used or heard of Command Prompt before, you’re not alone. Many people are not familiar with this pretty amazing tool even after using a Windows OS for several years. Basically, Command Prompt or CMD is a command-line interface that’s used to execute shell commands. All the command prompt commands are pre-defined and you’ll have to use them in the same way to perform the desired task.
It has been a crucial part of Windows OS since the beginning and can help you tackle many Windows errors by executing different commands. Even if your external hard drive has gone corrupt, you can use CMD to fix it. You may be even curious about what are the hard drive problems that can be solved by Command prompt. Here I list a few.
To repair any corrupt hard drive, you’ll have to use CHKDSK, also known as CheckDisk, an official Windows utility that’s designed to check the integrity of a hard drive and repair it in case of damage. CHKDSK is executed within CMD and can be used to repair both internal and external hard drives, irrespective of their storage space.
So, let’s quickly check out how to repair a damaged external hard drive using CHKDSK in Command Prompt. For this tutorial, we’re using Windows 7, but you can follow the same approach on any Windows version to execute the CHKDSK utility.
First of all, let’s see how to use CHKDSK to repair a hard drive with logical errors.
If the above command doesn’t repair your hard drive, there’s a huge probability that it contains bad sectors, which also means that you might have already lost valuable data from the hard drive as well. Fortunately, you can also use the CHKDSK utility to look for bad sectors and recover deleted files.
Here’s how to repair bad sectors on a hard drive using CMD.
This command will automatically try to recover the lost data. As soon as the process completes, a new folder will be created inside the hard drive, that’ll contain all the recovered files.
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View More >If the above command doesn’t fix the problem, you can try the DiskPart command to repair the external hard drive by formatting it.
(All the data stored on the drive will be erased after formatting. Don’t forget to back up or recover the files to another storage device before processing the following method.)
Here are the steps:
A corrupted hard drive can be caused by its damaged file system. You can repair the corrupted hard drive using the System File Checker tool(SFC). Follow this way:
The users using the earlier Windows don’t need to execute it.
Replace X with the letter of the external hard drive, and change C:\Windows accordingly if the Windows system is not installed in the C drive.
While using a command prompt to recover data is a cool way to get back deleted files, it doesn’t work all the time. In fact, the recovery rate for Command Prompt is so low that you might never be able to retrieve all the files from a damaged external hard drive.
If you’re facing the same situation, we recommend using a professional data recovery tool, i.e., Wondershare Recoverit to retrieve the lost data. Since Recoverit is dedicated recovery software, it has a 98% success rate. So, irrespective of the type of hard drive error, Wondershare Recoverit will help you recover the deleted files all the time. It works with different types of storage devices such as hard drives, pen drives, SD cards, etc. The tool also supports 1000+ file types, which means you’ll be able to recover everything using Recoverit.
To put it in simple words, Wondershare Recoverit is your one-stop solution to recover lost data from a damaged external hard drive. Let’s take a look at the step-by-step process to recover files using Wondershare Recoverit.
Step 1 Install Recoverit on your PC and make sure to connect your hard drive as well. Now, launch the software and choose the hard drive as the target location. It’ll be listed under the “External Devices” tab.
Step 2 Click the “Next” button and Recoverit will start scanning the hard drive for all the deleted files. This process may vary for every user, depending on the overall storage space of the hard drive.
Step 3 Once the scanning process completes, Recoverit will list out all the deleted files on your screen. At this point, choose the files that you want to retrieve, and click “Recover” in the bottom-right corner to get them back on your hard drive. You can also tap the “Preview” button to check the preview of a file before recovering it.
Encountering software errors on an external hard drive is a common problem experienced by many users. However, instead of panicking about the situation, simply fire up your laptop and execute the above-mentioned commands to repair the external hard drive using CMD. And, in case you’ve lost your valuable data during the repairing process, install Wondershare Recoverit, and get it back without any efforts.
What are some common CMD commands used to repair an external hard drive?
How do I run chkdsk on my external hard drive using CMD?
Are there any risks involved in repairing an external hard drive using CMD?
Theo Lucia
chief Editor