Error on 500GB WD external drive that file or directory is corrupted and unreadable

I have a 500GB external hard drive. I had bought a year ago and it is still working fine. The warranty is now almost over. There are some files located inside it and when I try to access the same I am getting a error. The error is that the drive is corrupted or unreadable. It is the only source of my data backup and now this new error appeared. Is there a way that first I can recover my files and then later on I can fix back the hard drive. I cannot find any related option that can do this. Thanks.

I am having a same kind of issue with 250GB hard drive. It was provided by my office. It work fine but last night when I tried to move some files from it the same error appeared. This error appears when the original location of file or data is changed. I found a diagnostic utility on the official website of Western Digital and verified my system with that. There was some problem with the drive. I tried a lot to recover the data, but it did not worked.

Hi! I hope this can work for my hard drive. I am having the same error message, but I don't know how to run the chk disk deal that solved this problem. I am using Windows 7. Can someone explain to me? Thanks!

Well I found the same problem here and the perfect solution for the same is given. So as said by you that you are unable to do the chkdsk then clicking on the below motioned link will help you to solve the issue. And if you want look out for the solution then click here

Thanks I tried that link and it helped me get the command screen up by first typing "cmd" in the run program. So I type in chkdsk. Now it is telling me "Access Denied as you do not have sufficient privileges. You have to invoke this utility running in elevated mode." ???? Then I type in "chkdsk d:" and it says "The type of the file system is NTFS. Unable to determine volume version and state. CHKDSK aborted."

If you are getting the problem with the Command Prompt for enough Permission then it is better to run CMD with the Administrator Rights. Just Right Click on Command Prompt and then select "Run As Administrator". As per your second error it might be possible that your Hard Disk's NTFS index got corrupted and that is why you are unable to get CHKDSK running problem. I will advise you to use switched like /f and /r with the chkdsk command and see whether this is working for you or not.