How to recover my data from external hard disks after accidental deletion? You can try the CHKDSK command, or Windows File Recovery and its alternative to recover deleted files for free.
An external hard drive has incontestable convenience, light and small, facilitating us to store valuable data and bring it anywhere. But quite a bunch of users don't have any external hard drive data backups with them.
Maybe it is not a risky attempt to say that users consciously or unconsciously rely so much on it but do not leave enough emphasis on the maintenance of it, nor how to retrieve the data if it is damaged somehow.
That's totally dangerous. Can you imagine how deep the regret will be when losing the data, and then, you will need to pay thousands of dollars to get them back?
Some external hard disk users like Seagate users have reported that "I accidentally formatted my Seagate external hard disk", and don't know what to do.
So there are always users asking "how to recover my data from external hard disk" and are eager to seek if there is any freeware available. This matter needs immediate attention. Let’s see some real cases here.
Dog got excited and yanked the USB cable which sent the hard drive crashing to the ground. It's an 8 Terabyte Seagate Barracuda drive. When I plug it in, my computer doesn't see it. The recovery costs ranged from $3,400 to $5,600. I simply can't afford that much. Is there something else I can do?
- Question from Reddit
As shown in this case, the user has to pay over a thousand dollars to restore his precious data after physical damage.
Luckily, while we cannot deal with physical damage by ourselves, data loss caused by logical damage can be treated with care. We can turn to some third-party tool for help and prevent an extortionate price to retrieve your data.
But before introducing the software, we might as well take a closer look at the external hard drive and some possible causes of the data loss.
In this part, we are about to learn its composition and features to give a brief impression of the external hard drive to users.
External hard disks, also known as portable storage devices, are pretty compact and portable devices that transmit data with a PC. Users can plug it in and out at any time and take it anywhere according to their needs.
Generally, an external hard drive is mainly composed of the shell, the circuit board, and the hard disk. The shell is designed based on the consideration of shockproof, moisture-proof, heat dissipation, etc.
There are some main chips on the control circuit board, such as the master control chip, BOPS chip, etc. The hard disk interface is at the top of the hard disk, including the power interface, data interface, etc.
The most outstanding features of an external hard disk are large capacity, small size, high speed, security, and reliability. With the development of technology, larger capacity and smaller size will be the future development trend of portable storage devices.
We must admit that external hard drives are delicate and fragile, requiring cautious care. Lacking maintenance generates risks of disk failure, leading to data loss. The basic failure of an external hard disk can be divided into 3 categories.
• Physical
The external hard disks possess a very sophisticated structure, especially the heads. When the hard disk is working, the disk rotates at a high speed, and the head floats on it.
Once a bump occurs, it is very easy to damage the head assembly, causing a head crash. You may notice some grinding sounds if the head assembly was broken.
• Logical
Except for the hardware level failure, some logical failure may occur as well. Viruses or malware may do damage to the external hard disk, causing corruption. The hard drive may seem to be okay, but not recognized by the OS or BIOS.
Or the data on it is inaccessible. At this time you may receive a note that said you need to format the drive before you use it. If it was logically damaged, you could restore hard drive to fix it.
• Electronic
Circuit failure may take place, causing an inoperable hard drive. A power surge may sabotage the control board of the drive. External hard disks require a relatively high power consumption.
If an external hard disk encounters a power outage, some read or write errors may occur.
So then, how to recover my data from external hard disks? Check it out in the next part.
After getting a brief image or impression of the external hard drive and its common failure, now we can move on to the solutions we need to retrieve data from external hard disks.
To manually recover data from a damaged external hard disk, you can use the Windows built-in utility CHKDSK. Open a command prompt as an administrator, type chkdsk H: /f /r (replacing the “H” with the drive letter), and then press Enter. this command will scan for errors and attempt to repair them, thus possibly recovering data.
Here, instead of disposing of by ourselves trying to do some operations in vain, users might as well ask for help from an official file recovery tool, Windows File Recovery.
Using this tool, users could recover the files on their disks by targeting the specific file types/paths/folders.
Windows File Recovery offers several recovery modes and switches for users. To get a more detailed guide, refer to "How to use Windows File Recovery".
2 basic modes: Regular & Extensive;
2 advanced modes: Signature & Segment.
Now, to check your File System, please tap on Win+E to go to This PC > right-click on the external drive that has lost files > Properties.
Then to choose the recovery mode, please refer to this chart.
| File system | Scenarios | mode |
| NTFS | Deleted recently | Regular |
| NTFS | Deleted for a while | Extensive |
| NTFS | Formatted disk | Extensive |
| NTFS | corrupted disk | Extensive |
| FAT and exFAT | Any | Extensive |
Switches are also available for scanning filters.
| 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 | Recover system files. | NTFS Segment |
| /u | Recovers undeleted files, for example, from the Recycle Bin. | NTFS Segment |
Then you could follow the steps here to get your files back using Windows File Recovery.
Step 1. Install Windows File Recovery from the Microsoft Store.
Step 2. Start it As an administrator > input the command:
winfr source-drive: destination-drive: [/mode] [/switches]
If your data and files are just deleted or lost, then you could choose Regular mode to save your time. For example, if you want to recover lost PDF files from external F: drive to D: drive, you could use a wildcard “*” here if you don’t know the filename.
Then you could input the command:
winfr F: D: /regular /n *.pdf
Step 3. When finished, a recovery folder will be generated in the destination. Check if your files are back there.
If Windows File Recovery stuck at 99%, please get help from the tutorial to fix it.
Finding it too tough to use commands? Don’t worry, if you are not familiar with the commands, your files and data are still recoverable.
Here we have a software recommendation, the external hard drive data recovery tool MyRecover. With its simple interface and operation steps, users can utilize it effortlessly even if they are not tech-savvy.
Realize data recovery from an external hard drive easily.
Step 1. Launch MyRecover > connect your external hard disk to the computer > hover the mouse over the drive and click Scan to scan.
Step 2. While scanning, you could directly recover what is detected or wait for the whole scanning result.
Step 3. Select the data you want to recover > Recover x files.
Don't forget to save these files to another drive. Using this tool, it will be an easy task to recover data from formatted partitions as well.
In a nutshell, on the question of how to recover my data from external hard disks, here we introduced some basic knowledge about external hard drives and their common failure, and then the solution to solve it was elaborated, too.
To recover data from external hard drives, users are recommended to turn to a trusty recovery tool for help with time-saving and labor-saving considerations.
What is worth mentioning is that external hard disks are so fragile that need cautious use. Generally, users are not supposed to use an external hard drive for too long one time.
What’s more, it is better not to mix the power supply cable of your external device with other devices.
