FIX The File Or Directory Is Corrupted Or Unreadable ERROR in Windows 10 [2021]

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Whether it’s a USB flash drive, an external hard drive or your main PC drive, if you ever encountered the “The File Or Directory Is Corrupted Or Unreadable” error, and you’re unable to access your files, this video should help you fix this issue!

WHAT ARE THE REASONS?
To Windows users, the most frequently used file systems are NTFS and FAT. Then what is MFT? MFT is short for Master File Table and is included in NTFS file system, playing an important role in file storage. All the information about a file such as file size, creation time, and access permissions is stored in MFT entries. Also file recovery software retrieves lost data by analyzing MFT information. Therefore, once MFT gets damaged, system won’t be able to access data from the NTFS partitions.

Following are some of the common reasons behind this error message:
1) FAT or MFT partitions of the hard drive are corrupted.
2) The external hard drive is infected with a malware or virus. A malware/virus could corrupt the hard drive’s partition(s) or data stored on it.
3) External hard drive is physically damaged.
4) External hard drive was removed improperly from the computer which led to the corruption of its partitions.
5) The USB port of the computer (which you are using to connect your external hard drive to the system) is not working properly.

Let’s elaborate a bit:
1) FAT partition (FAT 32/16/12) is most commonly used on USB flash drives and SD cards. FAT partition stores and manages data with the help of File Allocation Table which locates at the starting area of a partition. To put it simple, the main function of File Allocation Table is telling operating system where the file is stored. Users should know that files are saved on discontinuous clusters, and each cluster contains a pointer to the next cluster, thus system can read all data of the file. So FAT error will lead to partition corruption.

Bad sectors are another cause for unreadable partition on USB drive or flash drive. Bad sector is a kind of sector that is no longer accessible or writeable due to permanent damage. Partition information such as file system is saved on a specific location. If this location includes bad sectors, then the operating system will fail to access data. At this time users will get the error messages “The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable”.

4) If you force to unplug a USB drive from computer when the drive is still in working state like transferring or reading data, then there is risk of losing vital files of system information. What’s strange is that this is the most common reason that leads to this error – a common sense we all know but tend to ignore for convenience…

So next time when you are going to unplug an external hard drive, make sure that operating system has done on saving or transferring data to the drive. Then click on the “Safely Remove Hardware” option on the notification area of the screen and then unplug the drive.

I NEED MY FILES BACK! HOW DO I FIX THIS ISSUE?
Chkdsk.exe is a command-line tool offered by Windows to check and repair volume errors. This tool tries to repair any problem it finds out, for example, lost clusters, cross-linked files, directory errors, etc. How to carry out Chkdsk? Take Windows 10 for example.

Step 1: Run Command Prompt as administrator: click Start button and search for Command Prompt, then right-click it and select the ‘Run as administrator’ option.
Step 2: In the Command Prompt box, type chkdsk /f q: and press Enter.

NOTE: Q here is the drive letter of the corrupted partition that you want to check so make sure to change with the letter of your drive!

➤ ALTERNATE COMMAND: chkdsk /r /f /x q:

This takes some time to finish the process, and is largely related to the amount of files and folders on that partition, the read speed of the drive, the capacity of the volume, etc.

NOTE: If you see the message “Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be checked the next time the system restarts?” you are expected to type Y and hit the Enter key, and then restart your computer to run the disk check.

Chkdsk will run the next time you reboot Windows.

When you reboot, the reboot will proceed normally, until the screen changes to give you the opportunity to skip disk-checking. As the message indicates, you have a few seconds to press any key on the keyboard to skip the disk check, after which Chkdsk proceeds.

Once Chkdsk completes, the computer should reboot and load Windows normally. It should fix the issues

➤ MORE INFORMATION & RESOURCES:
✓ https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic/the-file-or-directory-is-corrupted-and-unreadable.html

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