I have a external HD full of important files I have most the files backed up but I need to make sure I have everything. Windows decided to stop recognizing the hard drive when I plug it in it wants me to format. So when I try to run Recuva it says unable to read MTF or when I run the wizard The path does not exist. Has any one had experience with this? I saw in the Help that sometimes when a quick format has been done Recuva can recover files I am almost tempted to just go ahead and do a quick format in hopes that Recuva can recover some of my files. I would love to hear some advice on this.
I know Handy Recovery does read the "RAW" format disk (Which is likely what happened to you) & will enable you to recover all the files.
However, it is a payware app.
For me, it was totally worth it, but I hope Recuva adds RAW capability in the future. Would save much headache.
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What generally happens, is that Windows does not stop recognizing there is a drive. It stops recognizing the file system on the drive. This causes Windows to start asking the user "Do you wish to format the drive now?"
The drive still contains all the files, but the MFT has become damaged or unrecognized by Windows. This causes Windows to prompt you to format the drive. However, in doing so, you will likely lose some, if not ALL your files. You may (but then again, you may not) get them back.
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Events triggering this may come from a variety of causes, but here are common triggers:
- Pulling a drive out while data is still syncing, or being transferred
- Not using Safe Eject
- Hard shutdown (unplug device? power failure?)
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In my case, I had it triggered when my external 500 GB USB drive locked up in the midst of a 200 GB file transfer...
The only solution was to shut it down, then power it back on. Which triggered the "RAW" state.