[SOLVED] Reformat hard drive without data loss?

[shmu26]

A friend brought me their external HDD, which freezes Windows when it is accessed.
I can access the drive okay from linux, but I get various errors about split files and other issues, during the copying of the data to another disk. And it's a lot of data -- close to 500 GB. Too much to fuss with, file by file.
Can I reformat the disk without data loss, and if so, how? If this is a bad idea, what is recommended in such a situation?

 

[drivinfast247]

No. A reformat will erase ALL data. If it freezes a Windows based PC, then all you can do is a file by file copy.

Or you could easily get the files from the weekly backups your friend creates for just such occurrences.

 

[USAFRet]

"reformat" is absolutely NOT recommended. Or any other write operation on this drive.

"too much to fuss with" is probably your ONLY option.
If some or all of the data is accessible in Linux, do that.Copy what you can to some other drive.
Unlikely you can get all of it, but copy what you can.

Once you have the "data" off to some other physical location, then you can mess with the actual drive in question.

What was on this drive?

 

[shmu26]

Thanks, guys. I guess I will try to figure out which folder is the problematic one, and do what I can to copy the data, before I nuke the drive.

 

[shmu26]

What was on this drive?

Everything. Videos, pics, downloads, docs, children's stuff...

 

[USAFRet]

Everything. Videos, pics, downloads, docs, children's stuff...

The below pic in my sig is relevant here.