I was defragmenting my external hard drive which hardly had 3% free space. In the midway of defragmenting it, I stopped the process and tried ejecting the device but there was an error saying that the device is in use. But there was no window open using the drive. After 5-10 mins, I removed it from the USB slot without safely ejecting it as repeating the same error kept popping up. Upon reinserting the device the very next time, the files in it are inaccessible. What do I do other than data recovery and formatting to get the files back and access the hard disk drive. Is there any software that can repair the drive in a short time? Recovery is a very long, time-consuming process. Is at all recovery is the only option, which is the best data recovery software that can recover in the shortest possible time.
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1start with chkdsk, but yeah, aborting a defrag in process can have diasterous outcomes. its unlikely that it damaged more than a few files, but it does sound like the filesystem metadata was impacted. also note that the fragged files are often impossible to recover unless the filesystem has the fragments correctly recorded and is accessible to the recovery tools. – Frank Thomas Jan 31 '21 at 09:43
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1If you don't have a backup, then I'd skip DIY & go straight to a data recovery company. Attempting to defrag a disk 97% full was already a bad idea. Unplugging it was a worse idea. Try not to compound the issue any further. – Tetsujin Jan 31 '21 at 11:31