How to recover erased data from external hard drive for free? 3 free tools are provided here to retrieve deleted files from external devices, including CMD, Windows File Recovery, and MyRecover.
The tiny and portable storage devices, the external hard drive is popular to store and transfer a large amount of data nowadays. It’s mind-boggling how much data a single external hard drive can save these days, from a lifetime’s worth of photos to whole songs and albums of your favorite singers.
However, the only problem is that the more data saved in your external hard drive, the more vulnerable your data is! If you never backup external hard drive, you may have an accidentally erased external hard drive that saves important files. That’s why this guide comes, providing you with three ways how to recover deleted data from external hard drive on Windows 10/8/7 PC.
To answer the question - can you recover deleted data from external hard drive, it is necessary to acknowledge the difference between data deletion and data wipe.
Data Delete You can simply request the operating system to erase any files from the external hard drive using a data delete request. All traces of data are not completely wiped throughout the data deletion process, and you can retrieve deleted data from Recycle Bin or in any other possible way.
Even if you have emptied the Recycle Bin, you can still recover the deleted files with the methods in this post.
Hard drive Wipe Hard drive data wiping occurs when using security tools to overwrite data from your external hard drive to prevent data recovery. It will overwrite every sector of the hard drive with new data (like zeros, ones, or random data), making the erased data difficult to recover.
No matter how you erased data on your external hard drive, try the three methods below to get the deleted files back.
The most simple and time-saving way to recover erased data from external hard drive is to rely on professional data recovery software. Here MyRecover is highly recommended.
What can MyRecover offer you: โ Apply to different data loss conditions. MyRecover can assist you regardless of how you lost data from external hard drivers, such as accidental deletion, disk formatting, system crash, virus attack, and so on. โ Scan drives deeply and quickly. Equipped with an advanced scanning algorithm, MyRecover deeply scans and filters all deleted and lost files in a short time. You can be free to select files to be recovered. โ Support 200+ types of data recovery. The software supports recovering files including but not limited to texts, pictures, videos, audio, compressed files, etc. In addition, the files will be restored to their original quality.
Click the icon below to download MyRecover on your Windows 11/10/8/7/Server computer and recover deleted files from external hard drive by following the simple three steps below.
Step 1. Connect your external hard drive to your computer > Run MyRecover on your computer > Find the external hard drive > Click Scan.
Step 2. Wait for the scan process to finish. During the process, you can click the folders in the Scanned files list to browse and choose the files you’d like to recover.
Step 3. Make sure you have selected all needed data to recover > Click Recover x files to get the lost files back > Finally, choose a destination to save the selected files.
If you wonder how to recover deleted files from external hard drive without software, you can try Windows Command and Windows File Recovery.
Please keep in mind that while this method can recover deleted data from external hard drives, it does need a more hands-on approach.
Step 1. Connect your external hard drive with your computer > Type in cmd in the Search bar next to the Start menu > Click Run as administrator to continue.
Step 2. Input the command ATTRIB -H -R -S /S /D X:*.* > Replace the X with the letter of your hard drive.
Now, you can get the data recovered from the external hard drive. Close the window of CMD, and have a check in your external hard drive.
The official Microsoft command-line software - Windows File Recovery is also a nice try to get lost files on external hard drive back. You can make use of it to restore points to recover deleted files from external hard drive.
Preparation to utilize Windows File Recovery
Before the recovery process, you need to check the file system of your external hard drive. Click This PC > Locate and right-click your external hard drive > Select Properties to view it in the File System section.
Now, you can recover lost files from external hard drive with the steps below.
Step 1. Search for Windows File Recovery in the Microsoft Store and click Get to install it on your PC.
Step 2. Search for the program in the Windows search box, and click it > Click Run as administrator.
Step 3. Choose a suitable mode to recover your files based on the File System you just check.
|
File system |
Circumstances |
Recommended mode |
|
NTFS |
Deleted recently |
Default |
|
NTFS |
Deleted a while ago |
Segment, followed by Signature |
|
NTFS |
After formatting a disk |
Segment, followed by Signature |
|
NTFS |
A corrupted disk |
Segment, followed by Signature |
|
FAT and exFAT |
Any |
Extensive |
Step 4. Follow the prompts to enter the correct command line, such as winfr D: E: extensive /n *paper* > Click Y to continue.
|
Switches |
Definition |
Supported mode(s) |
|
/n |
Filter the scan range: scans for a specific file with its file name/path/type, etc. |
All |
|
/y: |
Recover specific extension groups. |
Signature |
|
/k |
Recovers system files. |
NTFS Segmentโโโโโ |
|
/u |
Recovers undeleted files, for example, from the Recycle Bin. |
NTFS Segment |
That’s all for the three effective ways how to recover erased data from external hard drive. Hope you can get your deleted files back with one of the methods.
As it is mentioned at the very beginning of this guide, you may lose the data from external hard drive unexpectedly if you haven’t backed it up. Therefore, it is suggested to regularly backup your files on external hard drive. If this guide helps you, please share it with others.