

While most viruses and other kinds of malware don’t corrupt data, some are programmed to do just that and cause as much damage as possible by deleting important system files or encrypting personal data. However, things can become very bad if the buggy software has admin privileges and access to system files. In such cases, corruption tends to be limited to the files accessed by the buggy software. Anything from regular wear and tear to minuscule debris floating inside the hard drive enclosure can result in read/write issues and cause hard drive corruption and errors.įiles stored on a healthy hard drive can become corrupted because of software bugs.

Traditional spinning hard drives are complex electro-mechanical devices that rely on the interaction of platters traveling anywhere from 5,400 to 12,000 RPM and delicate read/write heads hovering just a few nanometers above them. There are many reasons why your external hard drive may trigger the “You need to format the disk before you can use it” pop-up window, and you need to understand at least the most common ones to determine the best data recovery approach. How to make an external NTFS hard drive bootable?.How to recover files from external hard drive without formatting on Mac?.Tip: Don’t Forget to Frequently Back Up Your Data.Symptoms of External Hard Drive Corruption.Method 3: Replace Corrupted Files with SFC.Method2: Use CHKDSK to Fix File System Errors.Method 1: Scan Your Computer for Viruses.How to Fix External Hard Drive without Formatting.How to Restore Data from External Hard Drive.
