Directory refuses to be deleted

[davy jones]

A particular folder on my Western Digital 2 TB external hard disk is refusing to get deleted. The error shown is "Input/Output error". I have faced this problem before with this hard disk but it was a very long time ago and the only solution I found then was to format it. It is a strange problem because the folder has suddenly gotten corrupted for no visible reason. One of the files now has a weird character in its name (this has also happened before). Formatting the drive is simply not an option anymore because it has too much data and I have no place to back it up. Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you.

[CharlesA]

That part of the drive is bad.

Have you tried running fsck or badblocks on the drive?

[davy jones]

No. Can you please tell me how to do that? (I'm not really tech savvy)

[carl4926]

If you install gparted you can use that to check the drive, assuming it's a Linux format?

[davy jones]

It's NTFS

[k999]

Try connecting it to a Windows computer, and then run a disk check on it.

[davy jones]

Also, when I clicked on the check option in gparted, there was an alert saying that doing that can cause loss of data, which as I said, I just can't afford.

[carl4926]

Use windows to check it
It could be a dirty problem

[CharlesA]

Use windows to check it
It could be a dirty problem

Yep. That is more than likely the problem.

[davy jones]

OK I have still not been able to solve this problem. I have not checked it using windows yet but I don't want to take any steps that may result in loss of data. A similar thing has actually happened to another folder as well and my hard drive has been acting up more than unusual. My computer just shuts down automatically for no reason during the middle of file transfers to the drive sometimes.
Please, I need to find a way to fix this problem WITHOUT losing any data. Help.