Hello all,
I am trying to recover my LaCie External 500GB HDD which seems to be corrupted after a misfortunate event. I was copying a large file to it and the computer crashed and I was forced to manually restart the computer. Now on plugging the drive in to my Windows PC I get the error "Windows needs to format drive K: before you can use it" or something like that, and when I plug it into my MacBook I get the error message "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer". I have been running test disk to attempt to recover the drive and the data on it, and I need help understanding what all the results I've come up with mean, and if it's actually possible to fix it? I have tried various different routes and have taken screenshots of everything, which I will post.
Any help would be massively appreciated.
Trent.
(This drive was not backed up because it was the biggest drive I owned)
Following are the steps I took on TestDisk and what it showed...
Obviously I selected my Hard Drive and pressed Enter, then I selected Intel/PC because thats what it said the partition type was.
Then I get to the first window.
![]()
So I pressed "Advanced" and got this next window.
![]()
I When I pressed "List" all I got was a screen that says this: "Can't open filesystem. Filesystem seems damaged."
Not very good... So I pressed "Quit" and returned to the previous menu where instead I pressed "Boot".
This is what I got:
![]()
This is where I got confused. I really have no idea what all those "warnings" mean. However as my next move I pressed "Dump" because I knew what that meant. When I pressed that I got something a little interesting...
It showed me my boot sector and backup boot sector dump, but as I scrolled to the bottom I noticed something strange.
It looked like this:
![]()
Now you'll notice if you string all that together it says this: "A disk read error occurred... NTLDR is compressed... Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart..." Now I thought that was quite strange. I looked up what the "NTLDR" was and apparently it's a problem to do with an operating system, correct? There is no operating system on my external hard drive is there? Or is that the problem?
I really need help to understand this all, and whether its possible to fix my poor LaCie hard drive.
Thanks, Trent.
I am trying to recover my LaCie External 500GB HDD which seems to be corrupted after a misfortunate event. I was copying a large file to it and the computer crashed and I was forced to manually restart the computer. Now on plugging the drive in to my Windows PC I get the error "Windows needs to format drive K: before you can use it" or something like that, and when I plug it into my MacBook I get the error message "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer". I have been running test disk to attempt to recover the drive and the data on it, and I need help understanding what all the results I've come up with mean, and if it's actually possible to fix it? I have tried various different routes and have taken screenshots of everything, which I will post.
Any help would be massively appreciated.
Trent.
(This drive was not backed up because it was the biggest drive I owned)
Following are the steps I took on TestDisk and what it showed...
Obviously I selected my Hard Drive and pressed Enter, then I selected Intel/PC because thats what it said the partition type was.
Then I get to the first window.
So I pressed "Advanced" and got this next window.
I When I pressed "List" all I got was a screen that says this: "Can't open filesystem. Filesystem seems damaged."
Not very good... So I pressed "Quit" and returned to the previous menu where instead I pressed "Boot".
This is what I got:
This is where I got confused. I really have no idea what all those "warnings" mean. However as my next move I pressed "Dump" because I knew what that meant. When I pressed that I got something a little interesting...
It showed me my boot sector and backup boot sector dump, but as I scrolled to the bottom I noticed something strange.
It looked like this:
Now you'll notice if you string all that together it says this: "A disk read error occurred... NTLDR is compressed... Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart..." Now I thought that was quite strange. I looked up what the "NTLDR" was and apparently it's a problem to do with an operating system, correct? There is no operating system on my external hard drive is there? Or is that the problem?
I really need help to understand this all, and whether its possible to fix my poor LaCie hard drive.
Thanks, Trent.