When built-in hard drives or Google Drive fail to work, people turn to the external hard drive. External hard drives are portable devices which connect to computers or other devices via interfaces such as USB, Thunderbolt, or Wi-Fi. They are responsible for providing you with additional storage space.
But did you know this device offers more than just added storage space? Being a backup storage, external hard drives may also be utilized to recover data accidentally deleted, lost because of system failure, or corrupted on your computer. With it, you can restore your data by transferring it from this device back to your PC after seeking help from tools, such as a Windows data recovery software, so that you can access the several files stored on your external hard drive. How exactly do you recover data from this drive? Learn more in this fruitful discussion.
Common Causes Of Data Loss
Data loss pertains to an incident wherein data get either destroyed, deleted, corrupted, or made unreadable for you or the software applications you use. Below are the most common causes of data loss:
- Human error: The root cause of most data loss, it may constitute the accidental deletion of data files and liquid spillage, among other instances.
- Theft: If your PC or laptop is stolen, its data will, of course, also be lost.
- Software corruption: It is normal for data to be corrupted or lost when software is corrupted.
- Computer viruses: When viruses or malware infiltrate and interfere with your system, they steal, corrupt, encrypt, or delete your most important data before you know it.
- Hardware impairment: Errors with your hardware, such as when it has already been with you for several years, can cause data loss.
- Natural disasters and power failure: Natural calamities, such as floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, cyclones, fires, and lightning, as well as power failure, can, believe it or not, cause loss of data, especially in office or business systems.
Ways On How To Recover Data From The External Hard Drive
How do you actually recover data from your external hard drive successfully? The steps are outlined next.
1. Use A Windows Data Recovery Software
If you are dealing with recovering Windows data, one of the best things you can do is use a Windows data recovery software, such as Stellar. This software has the power to recover lost or deleted Windows data with ease. More about Stellar later on. First, here are the steps on how to recover your data using this software:
- First, download the Stellar Data Recovery software easily from its official website.
- Second, install it on your system, then run it.
- Third, choose the data type you wish to recover, and the process of retrieving the deleted data will commence.
- The scanning process will follow suit. From then on, you can choose the files or folders you want to recover. Press the corresponding buttons.
- The concluding step is to save the recovered files by choosing where to place them.
Aside from Stellar, here are more ways to successfully recover data from your external hard drive.
2. Go To Your Backup Solution
If you backed up your external hard drive to your PC, another device, or the cloud, then this backup file is another fantastic way to avoid data loss. Through this, you can recover deleted data from your external hard drive or lost files because of any of the abovementioned problems.
However, there’s a caveat. This method just restores files from a previous backup only and never the data you stored after disk backup. So, choose wisely.
3. Use Your Recycle Bin
Another way to recover data from your external hard drive is to proceed to your Recycle Bin. This is regarded as a recommended way to recover those deleted files from the external hard drive and even from other locations. The Recycle Bin folder keeps deleted files until you permanently empty them and overwrite the space with other data. See? You really don’t need to overthink things too much.
4. Turn To The ‘Hidden Items’ Option
This method works very effectively if you have not managed to delete files from your external hard drive. Use the “Hidden Items” option to check and double-check if they are still on your external hard disk, only that they are invisible. This shall show hidden items and files which you can retrieve simply. This option works if the culprit is a virus or malware infection, as well as file system errors and corruption.
5. Via The File History Feature
Meanwhile, this method is beneficial when you have the newer versions of Windows. These versions have the automatic data backup and restoration feature. Wait for the best part. This feature backs up all previous file versions and allows you to save data to an external hard drive or remote network site. This way, you can retrieve data from your external hard drive while keeping data loss at bay.
6. From The Windows System File Checker
This built-in utility for scanning and repairing your PC’s corrupted system files also helps you restore data from your external hard drive, primarily if you’ve lost it because of mainly unexpected system crashes and malware.
7. With A Windows Command Prompt
While there are steps above that involve you typing a command prompt, this particular way only requires you to execute just one command to fix missing, inaccessible, or deleted files in not just your external hard drive, but also your internal hard drive, too. Otherwise, if all else fails, consult with a professional technician.
How Stellar Data Recovery Can Help
Discussed above are some ways to recover data from your external hard drive. For the best and fastest solution, turn to Stellar Data Recovery. Aside from recovering lost or deleted documents, photos, clips, email files, and the like, this also recovers unlimited file formats on various storage devices. The software also recovers data from drivers that have been formatted and re-formatted, corrupted, and encrypted. Using this software is as easy as scanning and restoring your files. Two steps!
Stellar Data Recovery is capable of recovering an extensive range of file types and formats, which include photos, videos, documents, archive formats, email, and audio. Apart from the external hard drive, it also supports hard disks, USBs, SSDs, SD cards, and your PCs and laptops themselves. Carry on with your productivity. Choose Stellar Data Recovery.
