Nowadays, more and more people use external hard drives. Modern USB drives have a good operating speed, which is increasing every day and are also very affordable devices in terms of price. And, they have a very large amount of memory about their price. This is most likely what makes the external hard drive so popular among modern computer users.

Even though external hard drives have a very reliable and high-quality file structure and are very good at protecting the information stored on them. Nevertheless, they’re subject to several different risks, much more than internal hard drives. That’s why the availability of data recovery services for restoring an external hard drive is very popular since there are often cases when information from USB drives becomes impossible to read. 

Here are the following steps to recover data from an external hard drive without formatting!

Let’s have a look!

Causes of Damage to External Hard Drive

This state of affairs isn’t at all surprising since there is always a risk of dropping the USB drive or causing certain physical damage to it, which will seriously interfere with its normal operation. Also, it isn’t uncommon for the owners of external hard drives to leave them for a long period in conditions of extremely low or extremely high temperatures, which can greatly affect their performance.

But in addition to obvious physical reasons, software reasons can also cause damage to the disk. For example, logical errors that can occur due to improper ejection of a disk or due to power failures can also cause problems in the operation of the storage device. Therefore, if you are using external hard drives, be sure to use the eject function that is available on every computer before removing the external drive. Thus, you can protect yourself from such problems. 

It’s very dangerous to remove a disc without preliminary preparation. Such extraction can lead to problems in the file system of the external drive. Even if you damaged your USB drive, don’t worry, as many methods allow you to perform high-quality and effective recovery of an external hard drive.

How to Recover Data from an External Hard Drive?

  • Collect Information About Hard Drive Corruption

There are several signs that indicate corrupted HDD data files. Taking into account the several reasons will lead you to discover an effective hard drive data recovery solution. However, ignoring them pose several data risks. You need to get your files back from the drive before it completely fails or is damaged. While monitoring the device, you need to check the frequent crashes, system freezes, boot error messages, and slow response time. Other signs like clicking, grinding or beeping noises also lead to forever deletion. 

  • Install Antivirus

Installing and running an antivirus on a PC or laptop might protect you from losing your data permanently. When you suspect you’re dealing with a corrupted external hard drive, it’s time to install antivirus from a reputable manufacturer. Now, scan the infected device by attaching it to the computer. Viruses and other various malicious software put the device at a risk, which further causes damage. 

  • Try CHKDSK Scan

Maybe you have become successful in repairing your external hard drive through the Windows CHKDSK command! This tool tends to determine the disk’s file system and endeavours to fix problems affected due to corruption or bad sectors. Here are the following steps to try the command prompt:

  • Attach the external hard drive to your PC.
  • Open a command prompt and run it as an Administrator. 
  • Run a command – chkdsk X: /f where X is the letter of an external drive.

Wrapping Up!

The best way to recover your data from external hard drives is to hire third-party professionals. These are experts and well aware of several tools and software to create a backup or restore deleted data. Relying on such specialists means getting guarantees and assurance on services. 

We, CBL Tech, are data recovery experts who won’t only believe in offering 24/7 customer IT Support but also full assistance over customers’ questions.