> Free data recovery
> SATA controller
> New Win11 features
Drive stopped working
I have a 3.5-inch hard drive that has been attached to my PC via an external SATA adapter for over a year now. Recently, I booted into Windows only for the computer to hang.
I eventually traced the problem to this drive—powering it off ‘fixed’ the problem but introduced a new one. Now, when I power the drive back on, its drive letter appears in File Explorer but shows no drive space information.
If I double-click the drive to try and open it, I eventually get a ‘Location not available: The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable’ message. If I open Disk Management, the drive shows up as healthy, but as a RAW partition. Does this mean the drive is toast?
—John Arteaga
It sounds like the drive’s partition header has become corrupt somehow—John mentioned that the drive was running hot when it malfunctioned, but as drives routinely run 35-50°C when under load
