"Disk Corrupted and Unreadable"...

[Saxon225]

Using Piriform Defraggler, I attempted to defragment a LARGE external drive with pretty much my entire life on it...

"Some" of the items were backed up onto other drives; but not I cannot access the drive as it comes back "Disk Corrupted and Unreadable". 

Is there anything that can be done or am I simply screwed?

Thanks...

 

 

[nukecad]

I think you'll need to give more details for anyone to be able to answer and possibly help.

How 'LARGE' is the drive?
Is it an HDD or an SSD?
What filesystem was/is it formatted with?
How full was it?
How fragmented was it?

In your 'attempt' to defragment did it crash or did it complete?
If it didn't complete about how far % did it get, and what error message did you get?
What type of defragment were you doing? (Full, quick, files only, free space?).

What Windows version/build are you using?
Which antivirus are you using?

It might seem a lot of questions but better to give as much info of what happened as you can at the start, even if it's not needed.
Others may have more questions depending on the answers to the above.

[Saxon225]

nukecad - Thank you for taking the time to respond.

How 'LARGE' is the drive? - Upwards of 900+GB. (Do not know exactly). Sadly, I am a Civil-Structural-Chemical guy...
Is it an HDD or an SSD? (Maxtor OneTouch 4). SSD, I think...?
What filesystem was/is it formatted with? - No idea...
How full was it? - Used 600GB with 300+ remaining...Do not know exactly, but this is fairly accurate as I viewed it before I began the process.
How fragmented was it? - (39%).

The process indicated that it would take >1 day to complete. So I began the process and let it run accordingly. Came back yesterday morning to nothing other than my Start-Up Screen. No statistics or Status whatsoever. It was if the Program was simply closed.

The last time I viewed it it was at (18%) complete. No error messages whatsoever.

I was attempting a "full" defragment.

Windows 10 with Defender, Malwarebytes (as required) and I run Ccleaner as well, as prompted to do so.

Again, Many Thanks for your  assistance!

 

 

[nukecad]

Just from a quick look around  it seems that is quite an old drive. (Which maybe why it has your entire life on it?)

The articles I'm finding are back in 2008/2013, there used to be a 1TB Maxtor back then which sounds like what you may have?
https://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/maxtor_1touch4_plus_1tb/

And it seems there used to be a common problem with those Maxtor drives, they suddenly stop working and 'don't exist'.

It seems that the build quality was variable and some work fine for years while others just gave up after a month or two.

About the best suggestion that I've seen (from 2013) is to try a different USB port and if that doesn't work then take the drive itself out of the case and put it into a new external case. (There is a suggestion that the drive itself may be OK but the chips in the case connection may be duff).
Make sure you get the right case for the plug on the drive, it could be IDE or SATA, new external cases are pretty cheap so you could get one of each?

If you can get it working again then I suggest you backup the files ASAP to a new(er) drive.

Other than that I don't know, has anyone else got any insights?

[Andavari]

Maxtor is owned by Seagate now.

Could just be the bridge interface that gave up and not the drive itself. I've watched a YouTube video before where someone removed their old portable hard disk from it's enclosure, and then put it into a brand new cheap USB 3.0 hard disk enclosure (good ones are under $15 USD). That only works if the hard disk has a SATA connection, but if it's new enough and uses some proprietary connection (likely done to prevent shucking HDDs) you're likely out of luck. On much older drives there's "possibly a better chance" that they just used a standard SATA connection, so in that scenario the drive could possibly be shucked and put into a brand new working enclosure.