External Hard Drive Help

[Drakmorg]

Hello Forum Goers,
A few months ago a purchased myself an external hard drive because I was running low on storage space and also needed a place to back-up my system.
As of two days ago however, I can't access any of my files it contains.
What happened was the USB cord I was using ended up becoming unplugged from the Hub I was using. Now every time I try to access my files it says I need to format the drive, then it says:

"Data Error (cyclic redundancy check)"

I'm not greatly computer savvy, so I have no idea how to fix this problem, can someone help me?

EDIT: Now it just says:

"The Parameter is incorrect."

 

[Reed Spacer]

Could be anything from the drive dying (not likely, since you've only had it a few months), bad sectors on the HD (use checkdisk), or even that there's something wrong with the USB cable you're using.

I have no real knowledge of this, but I'be pulled up a google search for you, that might help. I offer no guarantees, here; I can only help you find the problem, not fix it, but at least its a start:

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&safe=off&biw=1600&bih=732&q=cyclic+redundancy+check+portable+HD&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

 

[Drakmorg]

Could be anything from the drive dying (not likely, since you've only had it a few months), bad sectors on the HD (use checkdisk), or even that there's something wrong with the USB cable you're using.

Every time I try to use checkdisk it tells me that windows can't access the disk, and I've already tried using a different USB cable, that provided no success either.
I assumed that maybe the problem might be due to me using an outdated USB Hub, but I took it out of the hub and plugged it straight into my computer and that changed nothing.

 

[zeonz]

It might be that part of your bootsector is corrupt. and due to that windows might not be abel to recognice your file format. and thus it wants to format the device in order to be abel to use it.

before trying to format you might just want to try a HDD recovery tool to try and regaint information from your harddisk ( it's hard to tell if your HDD is physicaly broken or corrupt ).

for example try http://www.piriform.com/recuva ( freeware ).

if it's abel to recognice data and retrieve it, then it's probaly wise to get as mutch as posible from your disk and once done format it.