Some external drives have a physical lock switch. Check the drive casing.
After the scan, CHKDSK will show a summary. chkdsk on external drive fix
External drives often use exFAT for cross-platform compatibility. chkdsk on exFAT is less robust than on NTFS; it cannot recover boot sectors as effectively, leading to false "fix completed" messages while the drive remains RAW. Some external drives have a physical lock switch
How to recover data from a corrupted hard drive on Windows 11 Fix: Look for your external drive and note
The drive is in use by another process (antivirus, file indexer). Fix:
Look for your external drive and note the letter assigned to it (e.g., , F: , or G: ). Step 2: Open Command Prompt as Administrator Press the Windows Key and type cmd .
Stuck at 10%, 12%, 13%, or repeats stage 4.