How to Fix the File or Directory Is Corrupted and Unreadable?

How to fix the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable?

What does it mean when a partition reports "Drive is not accessible. The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable"? It is a common error that occurs to external storage devices, including external hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, etc. If you check the Properties for the device, the file system is likely to be RAW. Once you see this error message, you will not be able to access the data on the external storage device.

A couple of factors can cause a partition to be corrupted and unreadable, for example, corrupted file system, bad sectors, physical damage, etc. However, you can get the error fixed via easy solutions.

How do I fix a corrupted and unreadable external hard drive or flash drive? DiskGenius is the recommended tool to cope with the issue. With DiskGenius, you can extract all files from the corrupted drive, format unreadable partition to NTFS/FAT32/exFAT/EXT4 in Windows, check and repair bad sectors.

Solution #1: Recover files from the corrupted and unreadable drive

Step 1. Launch DiskGenius, select the corrupted partition, click Partition menu and choose Load Current Partition Intelligently. Alternatively, right-click the unreadable drive and choose "Load Current Partition Intelligently" as follows.

Free download the latest version of DiskGenius from the official website, and you can install and launch it on your computer easily.

After wanted files are loaded by the software, you can copy them to another partition to complete the partition recovery.

Step 2. If the first step does not find the file, select the corrupted partition > click File Recovery > click Start button.

Step 3. Preview files after scanning finishes and check recovery quality.

Step 4. If files found by DiskGenius are correct, register the software to a proper edition and copy lost files to a safe location, as shown in the image below:

Solution #2: Format the corrupted partition for reuse

Step 1. Select the partition you want to format and click Format button from toolbar, or right-click on the partition to choose Format Current Partition.

Step 2. Select file system, cluster size, volume label and click Format button.

Step 3. Click Yes when DiskGenius asks confirmation for the operation, and the partition will be formatted quickly.

Solution #3: Check and repair bad sectors for the corrupted drive

Step 1. Select the disk that contains the inaccessible partition, and click Disk menu to choose "Verify Or Repair Bad Sectors".

Step 2. Click Start Verify button and DiskGenius starts to scan the disk.

Damaged blocks mean bad sectors; Severe means the sector had a good chance to turn to bad sector in the future; Poor means the sector is relatively slow to read.

If your disk has bad sectors, you can click Repair button after verification process completes. Keep in mind that repairing bad sectors will damage files, so data backup or data recovery should be done in advance.

Tips for Protecting Your Files

• 1. Always maintain a second copy of important files on another source, such as an external hard drive. In this case, even if your files are lost, you can retrieve them from the backup.
• 2. Don't use any anti-virus tools that you can't trust. It will damage your drive during the scan. Consider getting a trusted application with a good reputation in the marketplace.
• 3. Do not grant permission to third-party tools from unreliable sources to access your data. Also, always uninstall programs on your system that have not been used or updated.
• 4. Avoid connecting your computer to public Wi-Fi networks or any USB drives /SD cards from unreliable sources.
• 5. Update firmware and installed applications regularly to keep the system up to date.
• 6. Make sure that at least 20% of the disk space is available for temporary data, log files, and system processing.
• 7. Do not shut down or restart the system while files are still being accessed in the background.
• 8. Avoid forcing file extensions to change. Also, do not close the operation when moving files from one source to another.

Conclusion

In this article, we propose three solutions for fixing unreadable partitions. What's more, physical damage to the hard disk, improper operation, virus infection, and so on can also cause "The file or directory is corrupted or unreadable" problem. Therefore, it is important to protect your hard drive from physical damage and install some anti-virus programs on your computer to regularly scan the disk. In addition, in order to avoid data loss, we should take good care of our drives and backup them well in advance.

Related Links

• Fixed: You need to format the disk in drive before you can use it
• Solved: The volume does not contain a recognized file system in Windows 10/8/7
• Solved: The type of the file system is RAW. CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives
• RAW Partition Recovery: How to Recover Data from RAW Drives?