Can not access files on my external HD

I have a 500 GB external hard drive. I am unable to open some of the folders. When I try it tells me that I have to format my hard drive before I can use it. The first time it happened I rebooted my computer and it detected a bad sector on my hard drive and tried to repair it. It turned a 42 GB folder full of music into a 13 KB text document. Can I fix my hard drive? Can I recover my lost music?

Thanks,

Bob

 

you are in luck my friend! I had the same trouble though the extra hdd i used was originally fat32 formated and was also pretty messed up. Now running those apps posted by arie will only tell you if your hard drive is on the brink of complete failure and not going to save your data. First off, im going to assume your using vista, and that the external your using came from another os such as xp. This in just an assumption though, so if im wrong please tell me. Have you had the hdd long? What are you system specs? (mainly os/hdd's/dvd drives/ ram?).

What i did (might not affect your problem) is run xubunto activily (IE in the ram which means you dont have to install anything) and recovered the data by copying from the external to my main hdd. I managed to save 11.4gb of about 80 or so due to the drives corruption.

 

I use this hard drive on two different computers. It was orginally set up for my personal pc which runs Vista. My work computer is running XP. I am in Afghanistan and the only connection to the net available to me is through the military. I am not able to download anything. Is there anything I can do without downloading software or is my best bet to put the hard drive away until I get back to the states?