How to Fix Damaged External Hard Drive without Formatting It

Today morning, I have received a very annoying message "Unallocated Drive, Do You Want to Format It?”. I didn’t format the external hard drive as there were many important files including thousands of pictures, the best collection of my favorite songs and movies. Is there any trustworthy damaged external hard drive recovery solution available, that I can use to fix the damaged hard drive error without format? I really want my data back.

When your external or internal hard drive is corrupted or damaged due to certain reasons such as unallocated file system, virus, etc., then, your data in that hard drive will usually become unreachable. And, when you tried to access it on your computer system, Windows will remind you that the hard disk is not accessible because the file system or directory is corrupted. At this point of time, you can try two hard drive recovery solutions, such as using chkdsk command or using a third-party Windows data recovery software to fix the drive and recover lost data. Before moving to recovery section, one thing you should note is to stop using the damaged hard drive, until you fully get your data back, otherwise, you will experience the permanent data recovery failure.

Use chkdsk to recognize and fix the hard drive issue without data loss.

"CHKDSK" command is users first choice for repairing the damaged hard drive and recover inaccessible data. It does not require hard drive formatting and allows you to fix a corrupted hard drive without data loss. Now let’s look how it works for repairing damaged hard drive (I'm using Windows 7 for this demonstration)

1. Plug in your External hard drive to your computer system.
2. Just go to the start menu, type in "cmd" in a search bar, hit enter and then you can see cmd

Window, which allows you to fix your corrupted external hard drive without formatting it.

3. Type in "chkdsk X (external hard drive letter): /F (F stands for Fix error)"

After, finishing all the hard drive fixing steps, Windows operating system will check and fix the file system of the hard drive It usually takes several minutes. After that, if you see the Windows successfully made corrections to the file system in the command window, then congratulations! The damaged hard drive is successfully fixed, and you can access your data with ease. If not, you should try a third-party data recovery software to repair the damaged drive and get back your data.

Use Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Tool to recover data from damaged External Hard Drive

Stellar data recovery software is a proficient data recovery tool which can be used to recover data from inaccessible or formatted hard drives. It supports to extract data from laptop’s or computers hard drives, recover formatted drives data and all storage media like CF cards, SD card, etc. With its powerful data recovery technique and user-friendly interface, it is the best option to recover your inaccessible data from damaged hard drive. After recovering all your important data, you can format your external hard drive to fix the damaged hard drive error.

Conclusion: Before going for the full version for a real damaged external hard drive data recovery, you can first use the free trial version to scan the hard disk and check what files format the software can recover. For a gradually tutorial, please follow this Get Deleted Data Back with Windows Data Recovery Software tutorial. If you don’t get a happy result, just don’t pay for it! You have nothing to lose. But if it works, you will recover your valuable data. So, try it without hesitation whenever you come in data loss situation or face damaged hard drive issue...

Get Deleted Data Back with Windows Data Recovery Software

Deletion of a data is very easy but, the recovery of same deleted data becomes expensive when we don’t know how to recover our crucial data from our storage media. Also, It’s a poor feeling when you comprehend what you've done. Luckily, now you can easily get them back without spending much time using the Windows data recovery software. Here's you will get to know how to recover deleted files or get deleted data back.

How to Get deleted data back from Windows?

Just Look in the Recycle Bin First

The very first place you should look in is the recycle bin. Check your deleted files at the obvious places where all the deleted files reside for restoration. When you delete your files from any drive then the first place where those deleted files appear is Windows' Recycle Bin. To search your deleted data in recycle bin you only need to do double click on the recycle bin icon and have a look.

If you find your files there, then you can easily drag and drop it on to the desktop to restore them. But there are times when you have emptied the recycle bin too quickly, or maybe you have permanently deleted your data by pressing the Shift-Delete shortcut key.

Check Your Shared Mails

It is still worth checking your data at other places. Just try to memorise that have you ever shared the deleted data or document via email? If yes, then open the email and search for your deleted documents, might be they are still present in inbox, outbox, draft, or in other folders.

It becomes the major concern of users that how to recover deleted data when they have permanently deleted their files from system. We help you to solve your problem and find your lost files.

Use Restore from Previous Version Option: 

To Get your data back you can use the Restore from previous version option. Just do right click on the drive from which you want to recover data and click on restore from previous version option. After the select the time in which the data were present and click on restore button.

Below Read the Steps to get lost data back from Windows operating system

Step 1. Download the Windows data recovery software and just install it. Also, don’t forget if have already accidentally deleted some data then don’t download Stellar Phoenix Windows data recovery software to the sane disk containing your lost files location. As it will overwrite your deleted data and make it difficult to get them back.

Ideally, you should download the data recovery software on another disk and connect that drive as the external one from which you want to recover your data.

Step 2. Start Windows data recovery software. When you open the software, then it will show all the available drives. Now, select the one from which you want to extract your data and click on deleted file recovery option and click on ‘scan’ button. The software will now start the scanning process and list your deleted files

Step3: Now, select the files from software interface which you want to recover and click on recovery button. After clicking on recovery button, software will ask you to choose the desired location to save your deleted files. Just browse the location and enjoy your data again.

Conclusion: As, we all know, that the prevention is better than cure. Keeping the backup of your precious data always prevent the uncertain and pathetic data loss situation. Nevertheless, if you already have lost your data and don’t have backup of that data then don’t worry, as there is a data recovery solution present for you to solve your data loss problem.