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How to Recover Files from Crashed External Hard Drive?

Wondershare Recoverit Authors

Jan 27, 2024 • Filed to: Answer Hard Drive Problems • Proven solutions

Can you recover data after a disk crash?

My Seagate external hard drive has crashed. When I connected it with my computer, it is recognized as a USB device under the hard disk. I cannot open it. It was told as an unknown device. I am using a Windows computer and I want my external hard drive data back. Is there any way to recover data from crashed external hard drive? Many thanks.

This is an annoying problem. If a hard drive crashes can cause your important data to be nothing at all. However, you still stand a good chance of recovering data from external hard drive, even if the drive is crashed and corrupted. Read on and get to know how to accomplish the external hard drive crash recovery.

Part 1: Free Download External Hard Drive Crash Recovery Software

Since your external hard drive can still be recognized by the computer, you can recover crashed external hard drive data with a third-party data recovery program. Recoverit external hard drive recovery software is a choice for you. It enables you to recover data lost due to hard drive crash, system error, and accidental deletion. All you need to do is to scan your crashed external hard drive with this program to check how many files you can recover.

External Hard Drive Recovery Software

Your Safe & Reliable External Hard Drive Recovery Software

  • Recover lost or deleted files, photos, audio, music, emails from any storage device effectively, safely and completely.
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  • Supports to recover data for sudden deletion, formatting, hard drive corruption, virus attack, system crash under different situations.

Part 2: How to Recover Data from a Dead External Hard Drive

1. Video Guide to External Hard Drive Recovery

How do I recover files from a corrupted external hard drive?

Do exactly what this video demonstrates to you and you can get the desired results. Of course, you can also take a look at the below text-based guide to learn how to recover files from the external hard drive.

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2. How to Recover Files from External Hard Drive Without Formatting

Free download and install Recoverit Data Recovery on your computer, connect your external hard drive to your computer and follow the next steps to recover files from an external hard drive that is undetected, crashed, corrupted, or dead.

If you're a Mac user and need external hard drive crash recovery, please download the Mac version and resort to this page: How to Recover Files from Mac External Hard Drive.

Step 1. Select your crashed external hard drive

The program will list all local partitions and external hard drives in your computer. You just need to select your external hard drive and click "Start" to continue.

recover data from crashed external hard drive

Step 2. Scan the corrupted external hard drive for lost files

This external hard drive recovery will start a quick scan to find your data. If you can't see your desired files, please start a deep scan with the "All-Around Recovery" mode, which can search for more files.

recover data from crashed external hard drive

Step 3. Preview and recover your desired files

After it finishes the scan, you can preview all the recoverable files, select the files, and click "Recover" to retrieve them.

recover data from crashed external hard drive

Note: After recovering files from external hard drive, we highly suggest you fix the crashed hard disk for future use.


Part 3: How to Fix a Corrupted External Hard Drive

Can an external hard drive be fixed?

Sure, external hard disk repair can be done by yourself. Usually, you can simply and quickly fix hard disk errors by formatting. However, formatting an external hard disk can bring about data loss and many other issues. A safer method is to fix the crashed external hard drive using CMD.

How to Fix a Corrupted External Hard Drive Without Formatting

External hard disk repair with CMD will clear all data on the crashed external hard drive. Hence, please recover data from the crashed external hard disk before starting hard drive repair with CMD. You can move on to Part 1 and follow the guide on external hard drive crash recovery to make sure the stored data can be recovered smoothly.
  1. Type CMD in the search box to access Command Prompt.
  2. Right-click "Command Prompt" and choose "Run as administrator".
  3. Type the command "chkdsk F: /F" to start scanning the external hard disk for errors.
  4. Press "Enter" and the disk repair tool will automatically repair your corrupted hard disk.
fix a corrupted external hard drive with CMD

In the third step, you can also type the command "chkdsk F: /F /X /R" to do a more thorough hard disk check. /X can force the volume of the external hard disk to dismount before the scan. /R can help you locate the hard drive bad sectors and recover all readable data. Besides, the first F varies according to the drive letter of your external hard disk.

More Related: How To Recover Data From Crashed System Using Knoppix


Closing Words

If data in your crashed external hard drive is logically damaged, it is impossible to recover it. This is also why Recoverit data recovery offers a trial version. This trial version can help you to check how many files you can recover and check whether files found by it are what you want to retrieve or not. Get the trial version of Recoverit data recovery and recover files from the external hard drive.

Recoverit author

Amy Dennis

staff Editor

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