accessed disk once- second time refuses

I've been trying to recover some music and movie files from a Touro 1 tb external drive. Yesterday I managed to access the disk - the scan was extremely slow and the estimated time readout flickered between 48hrs and several days! When I stopped it after half an hour however it had pulled out a number of movie files which I was able to restore.

Unfortunately now when i try to repeat the operation to continue I get the “corrupted or unreadable” message and can’t get in. I’ve had this with other programs.

This is my fault for accidentally removing the drive without ejecting properly, but I wondered if anyone had any advice. It’s frustrating that I briefly had access but now can’t repeat it.

any help appreciated!

I am by no means a Recuva expert, but based on what you describe, it doesn't sound like the issue is with Recuva, but with the drive itself.

A common symptom of a failing drive is slowness - the platter has to be read by the head many more times then needed to overcome CRC checks and the like.

Another symptom is on one usage it'll be readable, on another, it won't. Eventually it gets too far down the slippery slope and doesn't come back.

Sadly, it sounds like you are at this stage.

Although limited and with no guarantee of any better outcome, there are some other things to try.

You could try a Quick Format of the drive (search this forum as other threads describe the detail). Theory is the quick format kills the boot sector but leaves all your files so a Recuva can have a better chance.

Try another PC and if possible a Linux one.

If the lost data is important enough, there's always the pro recovery mobs, and in case you aren't aware, they charge handsomely for their services.