hi have an external hard drive which i stored all my photos on but when i plug it in a window pops up saying files corrupted ,not allowing me any access to the hard drive , is there a way around this any help would be apprieciated

Welcome to D-A-L.

"a window pops up saying files corrupted"

Have you tried connecting it to another/different machine to see if you get the same result?

What OS (Operating System) are you running?

Have you tried it on another computer? From computer right click on the drive, select properties, and now tools. Select check now and give vista permission to scan the drive or provide an administrator password if prompted. Make sure both boxes are checked and hit start. The manufacturer should also have some diagnostic tools. If you download any it is probably a cd image (.iso) that you burn to a disk & boot into.

While it is scanning, just in case neither works you might want to start downloading knoppix. That will be an iso that you will also have to burn to a disk. This is a bootable version of linux that might allow you to copy the files to another drive. However Linux is not good with the NTFS file system that windows uses by default so you will probably have to get something else to copy the files to like a USB drive large enough to hold the files or another external hard drive; depending upon the size you need a usb drive might be cheaper. If you get a usb drive and it isn't big enough you can boot into windows on that computer or use another computer to copy the recovered files off of the USB drive. You will have to enable file write access on the drive.

If that doesn't work your file system is more than likely corrupt. The only way to recover files from a corrupt file system is through expensive software or from a specialist who will also be expensive.

Edit: Sorry Dan you must have been typing while is was writing my narrative. Member's profile says Vista H.P.

Hello townsbg, I rarely look at profiles of members. If they're posting in a "General" area, they should provide the information required to help them. I have a "sticky" about this in (I think) this forum.

Yes I agree with that but I f checked anyway. kongking please let us know if your OS isn't Vista and we will direct you otherwise on how to scan your drive. Actually on XP if I remember right disk checker is in the same location. Also I meant to note that if you have to use linux to recover your files you can also upload them to an online storage space if you can connect it to the internet however copying them to a USB drive is faster. When it comes to internet connection Knoppix should be able to use your ethernet port however I don't know if it will have built in drivers for a wireless device. Maybe our Linux expert will chime in on that. A good service for online storage space is adrive