You might have those old unresponsive external hard drives that are inaccessible. How hard you try, you can neither format them nor get them to work. Well, in that case, you have come to the right place. In case, the external hard drive is inaccessible, we will format the external drive or run Check Disk using CMD using the instructions mentioned in this post.
External hard drive inaccessible
If you face such a situation, where you find that your USB or external hard drive has become inaccessible, then this tutorial will help you as it shows how you can check the disk for errors and format it too, using CMD or the Command Prompt, and hopefully, succeed in getting back access to it.
Run Check Disk using CMD
Using the WinX Menu in Windows, open an elevated Command Prompt window and type the following:
chkdsk /f E:
Here E is the letter of the USB or external drive – or any drive for that matter – where you would like to scan for errors and repair the errors if found. So make sure you replace it with the correct letter in your case, carefully, and hit Enter.
The Check Disk operation will start on the drive, and it will also repair any errors that may be found.
Once Check Disk was completed successfully on my External Drive, I found that I was able to access it.
Format Drive using CMD
I then backed up the data and decided to format it. To format a drive using CMD, type the following command, and hit Enter:
format E: /fs:ntfs
Again, here E is the letter of the USB or external drive that you want to format. So make sure you replace it with the correct letter in your case, carefully. Once you are sure, hit Enter. You may be asked to enter the Disk Label too. Type it and hit Enter again.
Disk formatting will commence.
CHKDSK stops responding
If you face a situation, where CHKDSK stops responding and cannot recover from file corruption, when you run the CHKDSK /SCAN command in Windows, you may Run System File Checker and see if it helps. You can also download Hotfix from KB2906994 and apply it to your Windows computer.
Additional information: Command Line Check Disk Options.
Hope this helps you someday.
How to fix external hard drive not accessible using cmd?
If the external hard drive is not accessible, we need to run the Check Disk command from CMD. So, open Command Prompt, and then run the chkdsk /f E: command. Make sure to replace ‘E’ with the letter of the drive you want to replace.
Also Read: Windows detected a hard disk problem.
