You double-click a drive in File Explorer and instead of your folders you get a box titled “Location is not available”, followed by “E:\ is not accessible” and either “The parameter is incorrect”, “Access is denied” or “The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.” The drive letter is there and the computer clearly sees something, but you can’t get in. These messages can mean anything from a simple permissions issue to a hard drive that is failing, and the right response is very different in each case.
What the three messages usually point to
“Access is denied”
This is most often about permissions rather than damage. It’s common when a drive was formatted as NTFS on another computer, or came out of an old PC, and your current Windows account isn’t allowed to open it. Your data is typically intact.
“The parameter is incorrect”
This usually means Windows read the start of the file system and found something it didn’t expect. Causes include file system corruption after the drive was unplugged without ejecting, a power loss, a faulty USB cable or port, or bad sectors in the area where the file system keeps its records.
“The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable”
This is a stronger sign of file system damage, and on many drives it shows up because the disk itself has started to fail. Treat it with the most caution.
Safe checks to try first
These steps only read from the drive or change the connection, so they won’t make things worse:
- Try another USB port, cable and computer. Plug directly into the computer, not a hub or dock. A marginal cable or a front-panel port can produce exactly these errors.
- Look at Disk Management. Right-click Start and choose Disk Management. Note whether the drive shows its correct size, whether it is listed as NTFS, exFAT or RAW, and whether Windows takes a long time to open the tool. A very slow Disk Management with an external drive attached is often a sign the drive is struggling to read.
- Listen and feel. Clicking, beeping, repeated spin-up sounds or a drive that gets unusually hot all point to a hardware problem. If you hear any of these, unplug it.
- Check the drive’s health readout. A free read-only tool such as CrystalDiskInfo can show SMART status on many drives. Reallocated or pending sectors, or a “Caution” or “Bad” rating, mean the drive is failing.
If it’s “Access is denied” and the drive seems healthy
If the drive sounds normal, shows the correct size in Disk Management and has no health warnings, the fix is usually to take ownership of the drive. In File Explorer, right-click the drive, choose Properties, then the Security tab, then Advanced, and change the owner to your account. This only updates permission records, but it does write to the drive, so only do it if you are confident the drive is otherwise healthy. If the data is irreplaceable and there is no backup, copying it off first through a professional is the safer route.
What not to do
- Don’t run CHKDSK /f or /r on a drive that might be failing. CHKDSK rewrites file system structures to make them consistent, and on a damaged drive it can remove files or folders it can’t make sense of. The /r option also forces the drive to read every sector, which is hard on a disk with weak heads.
- Don’t format the drive when Windows offers to, even a “quick” format.
- Don’t run recovery software over and over. Each full scan is many hours of reading from a drive that may not survive many more.
- Don’t open the drive’s enclosure to try the disk inside another dock. Many WD and some Seagate and LaCie external drives encrypt data in the enclosure’s USB board, so the bare disk can appear blank or unreadable on its own.
- Don’t keep plugging it in to check whether it has “come back.” Intermittent access is a warning sign.
When it’s time for a lab
Stop and get help if the drive makes unusual noises, shows the wrong size or as RAW, has SMART warnings, keeps disconnecting, or if the error appeared after a drop, a power surge or a spill. Also stop if the data matters and you don’t have a current backup. Our engineers image the drive first and work from that copy, so the original isn’t stressed by repeated access. You get a fixed quote after evaluation, and recovery only starts once you approve it. Learn more on our external hard drive recovery and hard drive data recovery pages.
Not in Southern California? Our mail-in data recovery service accepts drives from anywhere in the US.
Call before you try a repair
If a drive is giving you “Location is not available” and the files matter, unplug it and call Data Retrieval at (213) 986-4855, or book a data recovery evaluation online. We serve Los Angeles, the Inland Empire and Ventura County, and accept mail-in drives nationwide.