Can't save as - program stops responding

NYaccent said:

I am copying what I can to my other external hard drive - It has been running all night since the External "K" drive had many many many files on it. Once that is done I will reformat it like you said I should do and then see what happens when I start saving on it again. Maybe transfer some files like you said and do a check - I'll report back here what I find.

It wasn't that much money - it it is no good it's no good - I just have 5 years worth of graphics - personalized siggy tags etc on it - most can be replaced - some cannot so I am hoping I am able to save those files elsewhere. The transfer to my other external hard drive should take some time but when it is done I may need directions on how to reformat the other one. Thanks for your help. Hugs Ilene

OK Ilene, get back to us when you are ready.

There are also a few technical tricks to recover data even from damaged drives, and if you have lost something important we can try to get it back using some of them. This is a little involved but not really difficult.

!!!! Don' t use the drive at all if you want to try and recover data from it. !!!!

After we have recovered what we can, then reformatting MIGHT!!! get it working again, but it might not. All depends on what the problem is. Nowadays it is usually better to get a new drive rather than try to repair a faulty one.

Regards....Mike Connor

NYaccent said:

Before I do anything - I will see what was backed up by my other external hard drive. If I was able to save my personal pictures and personalized tags I would be very happy. If I couldn't, then those would be the 2 folders that I'd need to try to recover. I won't use the drive at all or do anything to it until I report back here to let you know that I was able to save the important items or not. Thanks again, Ilene

OK. If you are happy with what you have recovered then fine. Otherwise I will try to walk you through some special recovery techniques.

Regards....Mike Connor

OK Ilene,

I considered various methods you could try, but many are quite complex, and so I chose a fairly simple but very powerful one. It has the major advantage that it runs entirely in memory ( RAM Random Access Memory ) and does not write to the drive being recovered, which would overwrite data you are trying to recover!

First, you need to download this program;

Download DiskDigger | DiskDigger

It is free for personal use.

It does not need to be installed, just extract the files to a directory of your choice on your system or other drive but NOT to the drive you are trying to recover!

Once you have extracted the files, run the DiskDigger.exe, and you will get a screen like this;



Choose your language in the title bar, and then look at the drives listed.

Choose the drive you want to recover files from and then click "next";



Now use the "Dig Deep" (scan file system for deleted files), and click on the box which shows NTFS Partition ( and possibly a label from your drive).

Click "Next"

(Just for info; The other option, "Dig Deeper", will be no use to you as it will only recover fragments that you wont be able to do anything with, especially on heavily fragmented files).

The program will scan the drive and list the results in a screen like this;



Choose the files you want to recover and then click "next"

You will get this box;



Save the files to the folder of your choice. That was it! Depending on the state of the files on the disc, and how well the program worked, you should now have recovered most of your files.

There are many more techniques and methods for recovering data, but if this one doesn't work for you, most of the others wont either, and most are considerably more complex.

If you have not recovered what you wanted by now, then forget it and just discard the damaged disc.

As I already wrote, you CAN try to reformat it and see if it works, but that is likely to prove very unreliable.

Regards....Mike Connor

OK. Let me know how you get on.

Regards....Mike Connor