External harddrive fails

I have a 500Gb external harddrive which is connected to my PC and pretty much on whenever the PC is on. Used it as back-up for all my work data. Today (half an hour ago) I see that it is not visible when I click on My Computer. Noticed that it was off so I turned it back on but got a message that Drive H: must be formatted before it can be used. I can't afford to lose all that data. There must have been 4 years of client file on there and I need them back. Not to mention my own business back-ups.

Please help me restore this harddrive

Please post the screenshot of Disk Management with your external drive plugged in.

Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image

The data should still be there but you may have to work out in a graded manner in trying to recover. The screenshot should be able to give out more information for further advise on the matter.

In the meanwhile, 1. Do not try to format the external drive. 2. Do not run check disk that can possibly corrupt the files in the drive.

Here you go. The drive in question is H:. What concerns me is that it says 100% free I really hope this can be fixed...

Not to worry. Why pay for a licenced software when you can try to get it done with freeware?

For the drive to present itself as RAW there can only be two reasons. Either the partition table or MBR got corrupted. Most likely the former.

You can straight away try the Partition Recovery Wizard in MiniTools Partition Wizard home edition.

Download and install it Best Free Partition Manager Freeware and free partition magic for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista and Windows XP 32 bit & 64 bit. MiniTool Free Partition Manager Software Home Edition.

Then straightaway head to the topic Recovery with Partition Wizard: SanDisk Cruzer Blade 16GB in
Recover a flash drive turned RAW – Partition Wizard and TestDisk.

If you want to be extra cautious, then before embarking on Partition Wizard you can create a live Linux pendrive, boot from it and try to copy the files from the external drive in question to another external drive, both of which should be connected when you boot Linux.

Download Lucid Puppy (Ubuntu-Compatible Build) v5.2.8 ISO from http://puppylinux.org/main/Download%20Latest%20Release.htm

It is light and only 132.6 MB.

Make a Bootable pendrive with Rufus v1.3.2 (442 KB) http://rufus.akeo.ie/ It takes less than 2 minutes to create your bootable live Linux pendrive.

For more guidance on the recovery process directly get into the heading Recovering files from the non-bootable Internal Drive - applicable to recovery from any hard drive - in

Lucid Puppy way to recover files from a non-bootable computer

You may also use this tutorial by Golden https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/256518-peppermint3-create-live-cd-dvd-usb-use-emergency-backup.html to create your bootable pendrive with Peppermint Linux
- whichever is easy on you.

Yep, ICit , any live Linux should be OK ( I take quite sometime to compose my posts and as I was almost finishing, I saw your suggestion which is quite valid. An actual "walk-through" may make it easier for the OP. Even with such walk-through, I have known some OPs reluctant to indulge in Linux - the fear of the unknown. The fact is even me was reluctant till I mustered courage and try it and the result was that thread - the Lucid Puppy way.:) )

Actually I tried the Linux route as I have been using Linux on-off for years. While I can open the harddrive and copy over the folders, the folders - when checked in Windows - are empty.

Come to think of it I never checked the contents of the folders in Linux. Will do that now and report back.