Is my hard drive damaged?

[Lorelei]

Hello to all,

I have Windows 8 and my computer is about ten years old.

My hard drive is partitionned in C and E.

The C partition has no problem.

When I try to click on E, I have the following message :
" E cannot be accessed.
The file or directory is damaged, impossible to read it".

I would to know if I can do something to repair it.
Since the computer is old, it might well be that the hard drive is too old. Or maybe not...

I have no hope nor will to get back the content that was on E, I think it has been lost forever.

Thank you for anyone trying to help me.

 

[wiganken]

So Windows File Manager "sees" partition E: but cannot access it? Try opening "Disk Management" and (if E: is visible) right click on the E: partition area and left click on "Format" and select the full-format option to re-format it. This may get you the disk back but not the contents. Do you have the contents backed-up anywhere else? If the contents are important you may need an expert. Another option is to open a command window

 

[mrjimphelps]

Try booting into Linux Live and see if you can access the drive from there. This may allow you to get the contents off of the drive.

You can also run GPARTED in Linux, to remove the inaccessible partition, then recreate it. (Create an NTFS partition, so that it will be useable in Windows.) Then format the drive in GPARTED. Make sure that that is NTFS as well.

Now reboot into Windows. Your drive will be good to go, as long as it isn't a bad drive.

 

[Lorelei]

I used GPARTED in Linux. I just had to select the E: in GPARTED (dev/sda3) , format it in NTFS and then when I came back to Windows my E: worked. I pasted a file in it and opened it to check my E was again functional.

Thank you for your help.

Now all I have to do is to use regarlarly HDTune to check my old drive isn't damaged...