What will happen if I format my external hard drive?

Question

I have an external HD, it's maybe 3 years old.

It's 1 TB and is almost full at this stage, 950+ gigs used up.

There a several folders, movies, music, tv shows, etc... When I open some, I get a similar pop-up to the following:

But when I try to open other folders, it works fine.

Two questions:

1. What will happen if I Format disk, will I lose everything on the drive?

2. Why would only some folders cause this pop-up and not all?

Solution

If you format you will erase all the that is stored on this drive!

Windows will as for a drive to be formatted when it cannot read/see the information it tries to access. So probably not all folders are damaged. This could happen due to file system corruption or because of too many bad sectors.

In this situation I recommend that you

1. back up all the information to a different internal/external HDD. You MUST use a Tool that supports "sektor by sektor copy".

2. Only after that download the HDD manufacturers diagnostics tool and test it.

3. If it doesn't detect any problems you can also try to run CHKDSK.

CHKDSK can detect and in some cases correct those errors. However it's possible that during this process some of the information stored on the HDD would be lost. Before running CHKDSK make sure to backup all your important data. Please remember that once you start CHKDSK you should not interrupt it or you might corrupt your HDD.

To run CHKDSK:

• Open My Computer
• Right-click on the drive in question. Go to Properties.
• Select the "Tools" tab
• In the Error-checking area, click .
• If this is your system drive Windows will want to schedule the check for the next reboot.

Be patient it could take some time.

Comments

[DavidPostill]

"if I Format disk, will I lose everything on the drive?" - yes. I would recommend starting with Check your hard disk for errors. Do not format your disk

[Ramhound]

Worth pointing out. Its entirely possible you already lost the information. A healthy disk's filesystem does not just disappear.

[Daft]

@Ramhound Only some folders are producing this pop-up. Other folders work fine. I've taken it for granted that any info in the un-responsive folders is gone already.

[Ramhound]

The attach screenshot isn't a dialog that would only happen on certain folders though.

[Daft]

@Ramhound but it is. That's the problem.

[Ramhound]

You are 100% the folders that work are actually on the disk in question? How many partitions does this disk have and how many is it suppose to have?

[Daft]

@Ramhound they definitely are on the disk. It's a standard external hard drive, I'm not sure how many partitions it has... none I assume as I have not added any.

[Daft]

Thanks Charm, a new drive is in the post :) Hence I'm trying to salvage what I can from my old drive. How would I perform a check disk?

[Daft]

Really helpful answer, cheers.