One thing to know first
Don't let anything repair it. That prompt is the danger, not the fault.
The device is visible, which means the hardware is talking. What has failed is the filesystem, the index describing where each file begins and ends. Your files are almost always still sitting on the media untouched. The damage in this scenario is nearly always self-inflicted afterwards: chkdsk, Disk Utility's First Aid, or a format writes new structures over the damaged ones, and in doing so overwrites the information a recovery would have used to reassemble your files.
Often fixable yourself
External hard drive shows up but won't open
An external hard drive in this state is very often something you can resolve yourself, at no cost, and this page tells you how before it tells you anything about us. Where that doesn't work, the rest explains what the fault usually is and what recovery involves.
What this usually turns out to be
The drive is answering, spinning and identifying itself, so the electronics and mechanics are working. What has failed is the index describing where each file begins and ends. Your files are almost certainly still on the platters exactly where they were written, untouched. A filesystem does not move file content when its own structures corrupt. A drive in this state showing as RAW or unformatted is a drive whose map has been lost, not one whose contents have.
A portable external is a normal drive inside a plastic shell with a USB bridge board. The bridge fails far more often than the drive does, which is why a dead external is better news than a dead internal.
Corrupt filesystem metadatabetter news
The master file table or catalogue is damaged. The file content is intact and reachable; the map to it is not.
Interrupted write or unsafe removalbetter news
Power lost or the device pulled mid-write, leaving the filesystem in an inconsistent state. Usually very recoverable.
Bad sectors in the metadata region
The drive is degrading and the unreadable areas happen to be the ones holding the index. This case does have a clock on it.
Encryption without the key
BitLocker, FileVault or a NAS volume password. The data is intact but mathematically unreachable without the key or password.
What to check first on an external hard drive
- Confirm the drive is not also failing: no clicking, no beeping, no dropping out mid-copy. If any of those are present, stop, because recovery software will keep an unhealthy drive working for hours.
- Check whether it was ever formatted on a Mac or a NAS. A perfectly healthy drive with an unfamiliar filesystem reads as unformatted on Windows and needs no recovery at all.
- If it is healthy and the filesystem is genuinely damaged, read to a different disk with more free space than the data you are recovering, never back to itself.
What not to do
Do not run chkdsk, and do not accept Windows' offer to scan and fix the drive. Chkdsk repairs a filesystem by writing new structures over the damaged ones, which is the correct behaviour for a working disk and a disaster for a recovery, because it destroys exactly the remnants a recovery would have used to rebuild your folder structure.
Try this before you pay anyone
Genuinely recoverable at home, provided the drive itself is healthy
- First establish that the drive is not failing: no clicking, no beeping, no slow-then-stall behaviour, and it stays visible rather than dropping out. If any of those are present, stop, because scanning software will keep a dying drive spinning for hours and make things worse.
- Never scan the failing drive and write the output to the same drive. Recover to a different disk with more free space than the data you are recovering.
- TestDisk repairs lost partition tables and is free and open source. PhotoRec, from the same project, ignores the filesystem entirely and carves files out by signature, and it is the right tool when the index is gone.
- On Windows, Microsoft's own Windows File Recovery is free from the Microsoft Store. On a Mac, mount the disk read-only first if you can.
- Recover, verify you can actually open the files, and only then consider reformatting the original.
Carved files often come back without their original names and folder structure, because that information lived in the index that failed. That is normal and it is not a sign you did it wrong. If the drive is encrypted, none of this applies. No carving tool can read what it cannot decrypt.
How recoverable this is
Usually good, and often very good, because the media is intact and the fault is in the description of the data rather than in the data. The main determinant is not the original fault at all. It is whether a repair tool has already been run. Cases that arrive untouched tend to go well. Cases where chkdsk has already rewritten the structures are meaningfully harder, and sometimes that is what decides the outcome.
What moves it, for your device specifically:
- Whether a repair, format or chkdsk has already been run against it
- Whether the underlying media is healthy or has bad sectors
- Whether the volume is encrypted, and whether the key or password is available
- How much has been written to the device since the problem appeared
We will not give you a percentage for your device, and you should be wary of anyone who does. Nobody can know what is recoverable until the media has been imaged and read. What is above describes this class of failure; your drive gets its own answer after an assessment, in writing, at no cost.
What it costs
from $249
Deleted, formatted or corrupt (drive healthy)
Files deleted, a drive reformatted, a partition lost, a filesystem that won't mount. The media itself is fine; the map to the data isn't.
What moves a job within its band: capacity, how much of the media is unstable, whether the filesystem is encrypted, and how much of the drive has to be read before the files you need are reachable. You get one fixed figure after the assessment and it does not move afterwards. If we can’t recover what matters to you, there is no recovery fee.
Other faults on an external hard drive
Detected but unreadable on other devices
Next step
Tell us what failed.
Free assessment. Fixed quote before recovery starts. No recovery, no fee. Sydney drop-off or Australia-wide by tracked post.