help Unformatted HDD

[WolfeeLol]

I have an external with a lot of files that I'd like access to, and I know they're still there because i never formatted or deleted anything on it. I was on linux and i was reinstalling windows on my main HDD, never touched the external. But, now, Windows needs it to be formatted even though nothing changed. Any fix?

[MrDrWho13]

1 minute ago, WolfeeLol said:

I have an external with a lot of files that I'd like access to, and I know they're still there because i never formatted or deleted anything on it. I was on linux and i was reinstalling windows on my main HDD, never touched the external. But, now, Windows needs it to be formatted even though nothing changed. Any fix?

Read them with Linux and move them to a different drive. Reformat the current drive to NTFS and move them back.

[Sfekke]

6 minutes ago, MrDrWho13 said:

Read them with Linux and move them to a different drive. Reformat the current drive to NTFS and move them back.

Exactly what he said.

Just watch out to not accidentally format your drive, you could unplug it to make it safer.

[SuperCloneRanger]

try the Ext2fsd windows driver, it allows you to access linux(ext2/3/4) formatted drives inside windows.

http://www.ext2fsd.com/

[WolfeeLol]

1 hour ago, SuperCloneRanger said:

try the Ext2fsd windows driver, it allows you to access linux(ext2/3/4) formatted drives inside windows.

http://www.ext2fsd.com/

I'll try, but I'm running windows 10 and the website says w7 is max. Hopefully it works still, I can always try compatibility mode