Windows 7: corrupted hard drive (trying to recover files)

i have a hard drive that suddenly went corupt. i didnt format it but did have to buy a new hard drive which i needed anyways for more storage and i reinstalled windows 7. when i pluged in the hard drive it comes up as a drive but asked to be formatted before in use. how can i recover my files off it. i have tried to use easeus data recovery wizard but it always stops and takes for every and wont complete. but i know my files are still on the drive.

Its is disk I

Hello cbwhat, welcome to Seven Forums!



When the Hard Disk Drive is connected does it show up in Windows disk management and if so does it have a drive letter.

You can try Recuva. Note the deepscan option can a long time so I suggest leaving deepscan until needed.
Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File and Disk Recovery - Free Download

yes it does

Have you seen the suggestion after my first post?

this wont work. when i click the drive its asks to format it first.

does the HDD show as "online" or "offline"

click to enlarge

online

I guess I could have saved some time and asked if it shows as unallocated space first, if it does, this won't work.


Open an elevated command window, type diskpart <enter> to start, let's see if it assigns a drive letter to the HDD

list disk <enter>

select disk # = your disk #

list volume

select volume #

assign

exit

exit

when i get to select volume it asked if i want to format the drive again