How to recover data from a damaged external hard disk

An external hard drive is most often used to store backups of your numerous photos, videos, and other files. But there is nothing surprising in the fact that an external hard drive can be damaged. First, over time, it will still wear out; it is inevitable. And secondly, given its complex and fragile assembly mechanisms, with careless use, the hard disk can easily break.

Therefore, the question: how do you recover files from a damaged external hard drive? is quite common. Here you will find a detailed answer to this question.

2. how to recover data from a damaged external hard drive

Here is step-by-step instruction for using DiskInternals Partition Recovery. Follow it closely and the data from your damaged external hard drive will soon be restored.

1. Download and run DiskInternals Partition Recovery.

2. The recovery wizard will prompt you to select a partition on the hard disk for scanning.

3. Selecting the disk recovery wizard mode: “reader”, “uneraser” or “recovery”. For a damaged external hard drive, the best option is “recovery”. It will rebuild your file system to pull out lost data.

4. Select the type of files to search for or skip this step and click the Next button. At the end of the scan, you can also search by file type.

5. Scanning is not an instantaneous process. Be patient and wait for the completion of this action.

6. File search and preview. Here you can use search by file signature. This is useful if you are looking for files of a specific data type. Found deleted files are marked with a red cross in the upper left-hand corner. To view a selected file’s content, right-click and select Preview.

7. Preservation. To do this, you need to purchase a license and enter the license key in the appropriate window. That's all; your files are with you again.

3. recover damaged external hard drive with the command line

As long as you already got your lost files back, you can recover a damaged external hard drive using the command line. Why should you do that only after saving data from the device? Because this method will reduce your data to 512kb and that will make it impossible to recover any data from a damaged external or internal hard drive. But for fixing your file system and the storage, it is pretty good.

• To use the command line, press the key combination ⊞ Win and X / Win (depending on what the Windows version is). Or just click the Start button.
• Then enter “cmd” in the search field and press Enter. A new black and white “cmd.exe” window will appear.
• Click on it, you should see a line similar to this one: “C: \ Windows \ system32> _.”
• In this new window, type: chkdsk drive letter: /f or /r and press Enter.

For example, "chkdsk d: /f" (note: there is a space between "d:" and "/").

* Parameter /f - corrects errors on the hard drive.

* Parameter /r - corrects sectors on the hard drive.

This will start the disk check process. However, as mentioned above, there are no guarantees that the command line will not cut your files. It definitely would not bring them back. But it may help to recover your damaged hard disk.

To sum up, with DiskInternals Partition Recovery software, you have no risk of losing your data. Recover your files from a damaged external hard drive first and then fix your disk with the command line.

Good luck!