Question how to fix "the disk structure is corrupted and unreadable"?

[Lil’bertz]

my dad's external hard drive (WD MyPassport) got this message "The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable". what does this mean? my dad wants to get the files in this hard drive because it has his files from work (maybe because he has 6 hard drives so he cant tell if this hard drive has his work files). what can i do to access or fix it? if i can fix it, what software can i use?

 

[themogician]

Have you tried using chkdsk to fix this yet?
Run chkdsk at cmd. You might have to run as admin. Try chkdsk /f /r X:. Replace the X with the disk you are trying to check. /f and /r should detect for bad sectors and try to fix them. If you can't boot, go to advanced startup options and run the commands from there.

 

[Lil’bertz]

Have you tried using chkdsk to fix this yet?
Run chkdsk at cmd. You might have to run as admin. Try chkdsk /f /r X:. Replace the X with the disk you are trying to check. /f and /r should detect for bad sectors and try to fix them. If you can't boot, go to advanced startup options and run the commands from there.

i tried admin cmd method but its aborted.