Samsung TV messed up my USB disk - after disconnecting disk is no longer readable

[eMMGeee]

Samsung TV (Q80 series) messed up my USB disk - after disconnecting disk from TV it is no longer readable by PC and also TV sees no files on this drive. Trying repair permissions to the drive failed. Disk appears in PC as inaccessible. 

PC shows alert: ""Drive is not accessible. Access is denied".  I lost many precious family movies!

Please advise.

[Anonymous User]

usually recovery software will recognise a disk drive that Windows don't, try hard disk is different operating softwares like win 7, win 8, win 10, its worked for me in the past

[eMMGeee]

You're still missing my point. Thank you for your effort though.

Anyone else?

[StevePeterson]

I just had the same problem on my Samsung Q60.  Plugged the hard drive into the TV and it had a hard time reading the directories, so eventually quit.  Unplugged the drive and a few days later plugged into my mac laptop and drive registers as Uninitialized (unreadable).  Will not even mount.  Also now unreadable by TV.  Very frustrating.  Looking into Disk Recovery options, but hoping that there is a simpler option.

eMMGeee, were you ever able to recovery the files/drive?

[eMMGeee]

A recovery app did find some recoverable files, but it'd take ages to get them back, and still in rather unknown condition. Fortunately I've had this drive backed up. Which is must for any drive you decide to risk mounting on unknown (new) device. 

What I suppose that happened initially, was that I was trying to delete a file within TV interface, but somehow it didn't worked out well. But this could have been something else as well. 

[jd81]

Were you able to recover your disk's access? I'm having a similar issue and was able to fix it. Apparently the TV messes with the disk's filesystem, erasing user permissions. The information is there, but your Windows user account is no longer allowed access. 

What you need to do is right click on the disk, go to properties, security, avanced options, add, select your Windows user account, grant full control, and apply/accept everything. This did the trick for me.

One day later (after plugging it to the TV again) the disk wasn't even readable. I had to open a Command Prompt and run the chkdsk (checkdisk) command with the "fix" option enabled (change e: for whaterver letter your disk receives in your computer). chkdsk e: /f

The disk's file index was damaged and 27 orphaned files were recovered.

Apparently the Tizen operating system in Samsung's TVs runs a different filesystem and it interferes with NTFS disks. I haven't found a permanent solution yet, this seems to be a known issue.

[eMMGeee]

No, I wasn't able to recover this drive. Also I don't have any Windows PC, and I only use drives formated on Mac for ntfs file system. But hey, thanks for your effort and explanation. Will copy that to my knowhow base:) 

[jd81]

Never had a Mac but I'd be surprised if there weren't some analogous tools to manage user permissions and disk health/logical repair. Research them, your drive's information is not lost and you're a couple of clicks away from it! Good luck!

[eMMGeee]

Permissions were quite tricky on Macs some time ago as well. But as the disk is Windows NTFS it cannot be repaired using Mac tools. Also it wasn't a life threatening issue for me because I've got literally all disks, even portable, duplicated. Maybe next time (hope there won't be such) I’ll try to use Windows tricks via virtual machine, but as far as I can recall this drive was unreadable for Windows too and there was a prompt to format it.

[Deancent]

All Samsung TV owners, here is the fix you're looking for! This does not remove any files on the drive.

I have successfully recovered 2 drives today and all data on them using this method in a matter of seconds. Before this I tried many troubleshooting steps which none worked and my one drive has not been working in my pc for over a month due to this issue (pretty much gave up on it).

My drives this has worked on are a 2TB WD Passport and 512GB Emtec SSD

The steps!

1: Plug your hard drive into your pc.

2: Verify drive letter of external drive/usb stick that is not working in My Computer/File Explorer.
For this example (verify in above step) the drive letter is E:

3: Open Command Prompt as administrator - Type cmd in desktop search bar, right click command prompt app, open as administrator.

4: Type chkdsk /f (your non working drive letter).
Example:

chkdsk /f E:

(E: was my non working drive letter, verify your drive letter in above step)

The bigger the drive, the longer this process can take.

This fixes the index of the drive and makes it discoverable again. I guess Samsung TVs are changing our drives index structure.

Going forward I recommend using an external drive for your Samsung TV exclusively.

Hope this helps someone!

[muajajajaja]

But how do I upload movies to the drive if it's exclusive for the TV.