- Jun 23, 2025
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Not sure if this is the right forum sub-category to post this on but here goes..
I have an external HDD that worked fine, has never had any issues before such as bad sectors etc. It was formatted as NTFS and only being used (plugging, using, safely removing) on Windows systems.
I had another laptop that I needed some files from but the OS was corrupted/unbootable so I booted a small Linux distribution (Porteus KDE) to quickly get a GUI. Then I plugged my HDD to that laptop, it auto-mounted and all the files showed up, no signs of any issues. I copied the files I needed then I pressed the 'Eject' icon on the file explorer of this distro. A spinning circle showed up right besides the icon but it kept on spinning with no sign of change (the mounted entry did not disappear, nor any message saying it's safe to remove as such). I waited for I think 4-5 minutes but the circle kept on spinning.
I have ejected USB drives on Linux many times before by clicking eject and the mounted entries disappear almost instantly (signaling it's safe to remove the drive). This time, since it was apparently stuck, I just unplugged the HDD. One thing to be noted is that, while it shouldn't be done, I HAVE done this many times before where I remove a local external storage drive physically without safely removing it first on Windows and there's never been an issue such as drive corruption.
But this time it wasn't such a good idea apparently. Now when I plug the drive back in on the Windows system, it shows an entry with a drive letter in Windows Explorer but doesn't show the 'space used' bar below. Upon trying to open it, Windows says the drive is not accessible. In Disk Management, it does correctly show the total size of the drive but it shows as a RAW partition ready to be formatted before use. Moreover it doesn't mount/display any files on any Linux distro either.
Needless to say, I need the data. I have read online that there are some commands that I can try and some utilities on Linux that might fix the problem. But I'm not sure about the order of things I should try to revive it as I'm afraid it might corrupt the data further.
If it's a file system corruption issue, can anyone list the commands/utilities that I should try step by step to try to revive it? I only need it working on Windows again.
I have an external HDD that worked fine, has never had any issues before such as bad sectors etc. It was formatted as NTFS and only being used (plugging, using, safely removing) on Windows systems.
I had another laptop that I needed some files from but the OS was corrupted/unbootable so I booted a small Linux distribution (Porteus KDE) to quickly get a GUI. Then I plugged my HDD to that laptop, it auto-mounted and all the files showed up, no signs of any issues. I copied the files I needed then I pressed the 'Eject' icon on the file explorer of this distro. A spinning circle showed up right besides the icon but it kept on spinning with no sign of change (the mounted entry did not disappear, nor any message saying it's safe to remove as such). I waited for I think 4-5 minutes but the circle kept on spinning.
I have ejected USB drives on Linux many times before by clicking eject and the mounted entries disappear almost instantly (signaling it's safe to remove the drive). This time, since it was apparently stuck, I just unplugged the HDD. One thing to be noted is that, while it shouldn't be done, I HAVE done this many times before where I remove a local external storage drive physically without safely removing it first on Windows and there's never been an issue such as drive corruption.
But this time it wasn't such a good idea apparently. Now when I plug the drive back in on the Windows system, it shows an entry with a drive letter in Windows Explorer but doesn't show the 'space used' bar below. Upon trying to open it, Windows says the drive is not accessible. In Disk Management, it does correctly show the total size of the drive but it shows as a RAW partition ready to be formatted before use. Moreover it doesn't mount/display any files on any Linux distro either.
Needless to say, I need the data. I have read online that there are some commands that I can try and some utilities on Linux that might fix the problem. But I'm not sure about the order of things I should try to revive it as I'm afraid it might corrupt the data further.
If it's a file system corruption issue, can anyone list the commands/utilities that I should try step by step to try to revive it? I only need it working on Windows again.
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