My external hard drive is unavailable in Windows when I tried to open it in explorer (my computer) I was really annoyed by it, because it is my primary backup disk. I have found HD Tune free which is a great tool to scan your (external) drive for errors. The “quick scan” came out clean. The complete scan took a while but also was 100% green.
But still no access to the drive. On a dutch computer magazine website I found this small (also free) util called EaseUS data recovery. It can recover 2gb for free, but it can always scan your full drive to see if it can be of any help and is worth the buy. That tool also found all files:
But still no access to the drive. After some searching the interwebz I found an article which suggested to check the disk management of Windows if that would list the drive and if it would list the partitions.
And there is the error! The external drive is in RAW filesystem!? I have never ever heard before of a raw filesystem. I expected NTFS (because it can handle *.iso of over 4gb)
So I have found this article How to fix external drive suddenly became raw. That article suggests that you use Parted Magic which is no longer a free download, but still is available on majorgeeks.
You can also download testdisk for windows so that you do not have to burn an linux iso and reboot your PC. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step
There are a few guides online for the testdisk tool. I did not had to fix the mbr but I did write the partition table for the external harddrive. All that was left was just running checkdisk:
chkdsk F: /FThis solved it for me.
I will use the unplug usb drive build in windows feature everytime I use my external harddrive from now on.
Please read this if you do not know how to safely remove the usb drive in windows.
Good luck!