The error “Drive is not accessible” can be caused due to multiple reasons such as viruses, bad sectors on the drive, or power surges. As a result, your precious data in the drive also becomes inaccessible. In some cases of severe drive corruption, it could lead to permanent data loss.
Usually, when the drive is not accessible, you will see the pop-up, Location is not available, with the details “Drive X: is not accessible, Access is denied” as shown above.
Sometimes you might experience error with different error messages like:
“E:\ is not accessible, the parameter is incorrect”,
“E:\ is not accessible, data error (cyclic redundancy check)”, or
“Partition is not accessible, the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable” when trying to access the partition.
Why my Drive is Not Accessible?
It is important to have ownership privileges to access your drive. When you don’t have the privilege to access the drive, the error shows up. In such situations, you need to have ownership privileges to grant complete access to the drive.
Sometimes, the file system on the drive couldn’t be recognized by Windows due to an incorrect or invalid file system of the drives.
Table of Contents:
How to Access Data from an Inaccessible Hard Drive?
Steps to Recover Data from an Inaccessible External Hard Drive
How do I make my hard drive accessible: Fix Drive is not accessible: Access is denied Error
There are equal chances of data loss when you encounter any of the errors mentioned above. Before heading towards the manual methods to fix the errors, verify if you have a backup of your data. Considering you have a data backup, you can directly dive into the manual methods to fix inaccessible hard drives.
How to Access Data from an Inaccessible Hard Drive?
If you don’t have a backup, fixing the inaccessible drive can put your data on the drive at stake. Hence you need to first recover your precious data using a safe and trusted recovery tool and then repair the inaccessible drive.
With an effective search algorithm, the SFWare Data Recovery tool recovers data from inaccessible drives or partitions. The tool searches sector by sector to complete the recovery process successfully. With the help of the tool you can recover more than 300+ file types from the drive, and it is available for both Windows and Mac computers.
Steps to Recover Data from an Inaccessible External Hard Drive
To recover inaccessible partitions, download and install the SFWare external hard drive recovery software. Launch the application and follow the below-mentioned steps:
- From the main screen, click on Drive/Partition recovery, and select the error causing the drive to recover data from the drive that is not accessible.
- Now, the scanning process initiates. Once the scanning process is over, the software displays all the set of recoverable files on the screen.
- You can observe all the recovered data from the inaccessible external drive in either Data View or File Type View
- Next, you can also Preview recovered files, if the results are satisfactory you can save the files in any desired location.
Once the process of recovering data from the inaccessible drive is completed, move further to fix the error.
How to Fix Drive is not Accessible: Access is Denied Error?
Follow the steps to fix the error local disk not accessible, hard disk inaccessible in Windows 11/10/7 versions.
Initially, try the CHKDSK command to fix the error, CHKDSK is the system tool that fixes most of logical errors without any hassle. If this method doesn’t help you, follow the other methods described to fix errors in Windows 10/7 versions.
CHKDSK method to fix the error drive is not accessible
Right-click on the Start button Run Command Prompt as administrator. Next, input ‘CHKDSK’, then a space followed by the drive you wish to scan.
For example, if you wanted to scan the ‘C’ drive, you’d type CHKDSK C: /f and enter.
This process will fix issues present on the drive. Once the process is completed, try opening your drive again to see if the accessibility issue is fixed.
For Windows 10: Fix cannot access the disk
1: Right-click on the inaccessible drive -> Go to the Properties
2: Select the Security and click on the Edit
3: When the Permissions for New Volume (E:) dialog box appears, click the Add button to continue.
4: Add a new user name Authenticated User and Click OK.
5: In the permission section give full control to the newly added user and click OK.
6: A new dialog box appears on the screen and shows 2 options Continue or Cancel.
7: Press . and after the completion of the process click Cancel.
For Windows 7: Fix the Error Drive is not Accessible
If you are working on Windows 7 the error might occur if you are running HomeGroup sharing files and data and shared a root drive and left the HomeGroup without proper instruction. In this situation, access to the drive is denied that was shared. To fix the error on Windows 7, follow the below instructions:
Go to Windows Explorer and follow the below-mentioned steps:
- Right-click on the inaccessible hard drive >> Click Properties.
- Go to the Security tab >> click on the Advanced option
- Now, go to the Owner tab >> click on the Edit option
- Modify the ownership of the desired account
If you are not able to access any file or folder on a Windows 7 drive, try the steps below:
- Right-click on the inaccessible file or folder.
- Click on the Properties option and Select the Security tab.
- Click your name Under Group or username. This would show you the permissions you have to access the file and folder.
Bottom Line:
By following the above-mentioned solutions, you will surely fix the error location is not available access is denied in external hard drives. Also, to recover your important data you can easily rely on SFWare hard drive recovery tool.
