Help my 7zip crashed and now I can't extract any files

[circuitarity]

So I had an extreme crash of my Hard Drive Docking Bay taking out my collection of about 3TB on a 4TB drive, 3TB on a 4TB drive and 2TB on my new 8TB drive. As I reformatted them again before running ChkDsk on them I used a few older and smaller drives to start and replace the lost files and suddenly I started getting "unable to extract this file it isn't an archive" on 1 drive then again a minor hiccup and suddenly all my archived files have become "unable to extract this file it isn't an archive". I tried uninstalling and reinstalling 7zip, then I tried uninstalling that and using the 7zip 64 bit version, then I even uninsatalled that and fell back to peazip with the same effect. I looked up how to fix this but the directions suggest it is a file by file fix and this seems to affect any file I try to unzip.
Please tell me I can get this fixed without reformatting my PC (I have tons of programs I don't want to reinstall). I would appreciate if someone could walk me through a fix on this.

 

[anne O'nymous]

So I had an extreme crash of my Hard Drive Docking Bay taking out my collection of about 3TB on a 4TB drive, 3TB on a 4TB drive and 2TB on my new 8TB drive. As I reformatted them again [...]

Er... How to words this ?
If you have a flat tire, do you change your car, or do you just change the tire ?

Please tell me I can get this fixed without reformatting my PC (I have tons of programs I don't want to reinstall).

You don't have to reformat your PC. And I don't say this just to reassure you, it's the truth, you don't have to do this, it's not how you fix what clearly seem to be a broken docking bay.

I would appreciate if someone could walk me through a fix on this.

It's just a guess based on what you said, but apparently fixing your issue is really simple: Buy a new docking bay, and take some basic (online) courses regarding computers.

That one hard drive fail, it happen ; it's rarely as sudden as you depict it, but it happen. But that three hard drives fail at the same time, no, just no. In this case there's 99,99% chances that it's not the hard drives, but the hardware (here the docking bay).
Accordingly to what you said, the problem is, as you said it but apparently without understanding what it mean, your docking bay that crashed. Plugging the drives directly would have permit you to confirm/infirm this.

This mean that you had absolutely no reason to format the said hard drives. And it also mean that transferring the files to smaller drives was totally useless. There's high chance that 99% of the data were perfectly sane (the 1% being the files saved after the failure started) on the three hard drives. But by transferring them, what you did is taking sane data, have them corrupted by the failing docking bay, and then save those corrupted data on smaller drives ; possibly corrupting them once again if the said drives where plugged to the said docking bay.
And like you said that you formatted the bigger drives, the only thing you now have is corrupted files.

Also, when a software clearly tell you, "hey, the data you are giving me are corrupted", why do you believe that it's the software that is in cause ? If your car tell you that there's no more gas, you don't change the car, you fill the tank.
Obviously reinstalling 7Zip, switching to the 64 bits version (that you should have used from the starts) and using another software will not magically repair the data. They are corrupted, and since this corruption is apparently due to the failing docking bay, there's near to no way to repair them.

This being said, you said that you formatted the hard drive, but talk about ChkDsk, that do not format drives. So there's still some chances that the original data are patiently waiting you in the bigger hard drives, and that you can still access them once you'll have a not broken docking bay.


But seriously, take some basic computer courses. The fact that you believed that 7Zip was in fault because it told you that the data where corrupted will haunt me for days.

 

[circuitarity]

It's just a guess based on what you said, but apparently fixing your issue is really simple: Buy a new docking bay, and take some basic (online) courses regarding computers.

Sorry I failed to mention in my original post... My 3 large hard drives became blank and unusable requiring reformatting since they had no data, I didn''t transfer the data off the crashed drives after they crashed. The corruption of my current data occurred halfway through downloading new copies of files I had previously had
I was at the time slow formatting my 3 docking station drives (3 days on the 8 TB drive) and planning to do a drive Chkdsk on them afterwards to see if they were fixable or not. In the meantime I was using 3 smaller drives to put my favorite games on so I could play them. I got most of them until with little warning all 3 drives started failing to decompress any of the .7z, .rar and .zip files with the resulting issue occuring "unable to extract this file it isn't an archive".
I am hoping someone can walk me through a simplified fix for this (I think the issue is actually on my main hard drive or possibly another component of my PC. I ask for a simplified version because since I DIED (literal death) for around 6 and a half minutes my computer comprehension and knowledge has become somewhat restricted. Now as to computer courses, I have forgotten more about programming and diagnostics than most people ever learn (literally as I absorbed information at a fantastic rate with almost eidetic recall (nearly photographic memory before my brain injury)).

Edit: I think I will save myself the hassle and take it to a PC repair guy and pay him to diagnose and fix the issues.

 

[anne O'nymous]

My 3 large hard drives became blank and unusable requiring reformatting since they had no data,

Hard drives do not become blanks, at least not physical drives. And like you talk about docked 4TB and 8TB drives, I highly doubt they are SDD.
They can be unreadable, but blank no, never. And like their file system do not magically change over the night, either it's a configuration change, or still a hardware failure.

I got most of them until with little warning all 3 drives started failing to decompress any of the .7z, .rar and .zip files with the resulting issue occuring "unable to extract this file it isn't an archive".
I am hoping someone can walk me through a simplified fix for this [...]

Fix what ? It's right in front of you, those files are not archives.
What you want to fix ? No, it's more: what is there to fix ?
There's no magical way to turn into an archive something that isn't an archive. And there's no magical way to fix a corrupted archive (except, to some extend, with RAR ones).

 

[circuitarity]

I was hoping someone could help me figure out the source of the corruption which, I suspect, is more related to my PC since it keeps occurring after a random period on various drives. As I said I will take it to a computer tech who might find the issue with the whole configuration instead of taking wild stabs. I suspect you are completely correct about the docking station having a flaw which menas I will need to replace it but again, a tech will actually have a better chance of diagnosing the problem than me badly trying to put into words all the issues as they occured with my at best spotty short term memory.
Thank you for the attempt to advise me even though I was'n't able to convey the issue correctly.