External Hard Drive Partially Detected But I Can't Access It. Help!!!

Welcome to the forum. It shows the drive is raw which means it's lost it partition table you need to use specific partition recovery software there are plenty of free ones if you Google free partition recovery software. When the partition is recovered files will be OK. Do not try file recovery there not lost

Thanks samuria. I tried looking at different free partition recovery software and installed a few. What i don't understand is that there are options to select different types of files to recovery. I was under the impression that i only need to recover the partition table only, i can just access the hdd later and the files will be there. Also i don't see any free software, mostly offering limited recovery limit like 1024MB. Can you point me to a specific software and i am most grateful to you.

Thank you so very much.

one of the best is TestDisk - Partition Recovery and File Undelete
or try Free Partition Recovery Software to Recover deleted Partitions sometimes on wont find it and another will a lot are multi and do file recovery as well

Thanks Samurai. I will report back when i get a chance to work on it as i am out all day today. Appreciate your help.

Hi Samurai, got a question for you. Testdisk detected "None" partition table type but warned that "None" is rare for a disk. However the TestDisk website indicates that "Select the partition table type - usually the default value is the correct one as TestDisk auto-detects the partition table type.".

I do believe that the partition type should be [Intel] Intel/PC partition. Am i right here?

Unfortunately the grand old man Samuria (hmmmm....At +2, I am grander old than him ) has not responded till now. Wait for some more time till I return. No power here and I will be shutting down my PC now to conserve inverter power. I shall be back after power returns - do not know when it will. Thunderstorms here.

OK, with power returning, I am back at my desk.

First of all I would think that it is not a partition table loss problem. The volume is there and it has the drive letter too. Moreover, if it is just a partition table loss your drive will only show as "Unallocated". My guess is that it is a file system corruption that has made your drive RAW.Needs to be investigated.

Since you have already started on checking for partition table loss, I shall continue with it and see what happens. Your assumption is correct. The partition type cannot be none. Highlight [Intel] and press enter key.Next [Analyse] Enter. Post the next screen that appears.

Thanks Jumanji. So this could as well be a system corruption issue. Please guide me here because i am really not an expert on hardwares :)....

Appreciate your help here.

OK, QuicK Search is highlighted. Press Enter to do that. TestDisk will take sometime to analyse. Post the screenshot after the analysis is complete. Let us see whether it finds the partition.
CAUTION: Do not press Enter on any other command other than what is instructed.