How to Recover Data from an External Hard Drive ✅ 5 Simple Steps

It's quite upsetting when an external HDD gets damaged, corrupted, or inaccessible. But, as long as your external hard disk is not physically damaged or broken, you can use disk recovery software to recover data from the hard drive first. Data loss occurs for a variety of reasons that demand a reliable recovery tool. Situations when Disk Drill software can help:
- You deleted files on an hard drive by mistake;
- Formatted external hard drive;
- When faced with a disk that suddenly shows up as a RAW file system;
- “You need to format the disk in drive before you can use it" error message;
- Hard disk not showing files;
- partition inaccessible or lost;
- your external disk is crashed, damaged or corrupted;
- Viruses and malware.

Supported external hard disk brands: LaCie, Seagate, SanDisk, Kingstone, Western Digital, Toshiba, Buffalo, Samsung, Maxone, KESU, Silicon Power, Adata, G-Tech, etc.

Steps to recover deleted files from an external hard drive:
Step 1. Download & Install Disk Drill for Windows or Mac.
Step 2. Connect an external hard drive to your PC.
Step 3. Click Search for lost data button to scan your external disk.
Step 4. Preview found files and select which files you want to recover.
Step 5. Then click Recover to save found files. A save location must be different to the original location.

Follow these tips to successfully restore your files from an external HDD:

Tip #1 Why recovering lost data from an external hard drive is possible? Here's the thing. Until your files are not overwritten by new data, you can undelete them. The key is not to overwrite the files you want to recover. Stop using the drive immediately to give yourself the best chance of recovering your deleted data.

Tip #2 Do not recover the files back to the original drive. You can overwrite files before they can be recovered.

Text tutorials

3 ways to recover deleted files from an external drive:

📌 Related links
Recover deleted files from a hdd on Mac:

📌 Related videos

[HalloNano]

THANK YOU FOR SAVING MY FILES!! I thought all of my pics for years and years were lost!!

[buu]

I cant thank you enough for this video. my external hard drive stopped working in 2018 and after trying everything else this was the only method that worked. Your a life saver.

[josieleighanne]

I'm excited to give this a try! My boyfriend found an old external hard drive and he doesn't remember what's on it and wanted me to see if I could pull any/all of the data off. Thank you for the video and knowledge!

[michaelwarnock]

Thanks for telling us you've gotta pay £70. Love hearing that after waiting 4

[dogzonek]

YEARS OF WORK ACCIDENTALLY DELETED RECOVERED! THANK YOU!

[alexeivashchenko]

Managed to recover files from my external HDD that was not visible in Windows Explorer! Great work Cleverfiles team!

[catroyce]

Thanks for the video, it's really hard to find a decent tutorial on how to recover data from external hard drives.

[DD-vgms]

Not free but worth the payment. Huge thanks to the uploader for this video. The interface and options have changed since this video was created but it doesn't matter, it clearly defaults to the best recovery methods now instead of you having to choose them.

Disk Drill not only managed to recover EVERY SINGLE FILE from my disk that I accidentally screwed up and had become RAW according to Windows, but incredibly it also managed to maintain the original FOLDER structure! In other words the end result was as though nothing had ever happened, it was a perfect rescue.
It is a truly magnificent piece of software, even if you're in that awful panicked state with your disk and it seems nothing will fix it.

[Patrick-fzee]

Yesterday i used easeUS data recovery and selected my drive and let it scan and it found all of my files on my drive that i couldnt open and said that it needed to be formatted. I saved the recovery file on my desktop because it asked me to pay €60 to recover the files or enter a license code.

Then i went to sleep and today i wanted to reopen the file again but now it says scan session might be corrupted. And the drive doesnt show up anywhere anymore only in my device management it shows the drive. In disk management it says that the disk isnt initialised. Please i need help because it had 100 gb of important files on it.

[hhiskgj]

Thank you, you have no idea how long I was trying to recover photos of my son's childhood.

[Samzaf]

Oh man you saved me!
It was expensive but worth it, some files was damaged unfortunately but I got like 80% back 👍🏼
It was worth the money definitely.

[keewezzy]

Thznks a lot! I was helping my cousin fix his iphone today and he needed a flash drive. Not knowing that he needed a empty one, it formatted my flash drive and deleted everything completely. I'm glad I came cross this and I may have to purchase the upgraded version to get the rest of my stuff, but thanks again!

[vannyching]

I used 94hours to scan almost 500GB files include photos and videos, tks for your video and helping hand, successful finally and paid for the pro version.

[nti]

how to make sure that the original foldering and names are recovered?

[ricardoaley]

You are a life saver! literally saved over $500 that they were charging me to retrieve my files! Also I had already written over the files and still recovered them!! YOU THE MAN!!

[iCKEST]

you literally just saved 5 terabytes of my life. Thank you!!

[susanlee]

OMGGGG!!! YOU ARE A LIFESAVER!!! I literally deleted all my vlogs video on accident recently, until I saw your video for help!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!! P.S. I have a Mac, so it works well also!

[stepbroajo]

so my hard drive stopped mounting to my Mac so now im on my desktop and its showing, but it won't open. I can't seem to get my data from it and I was wondering if this app would help me to extract my files safety fir it.

[jrdehaisx]

Formatted my External by mistake instead of my SD, was able to recover it all! Keep up the great work!

[Rebellst]

hello im gonna need alot of help. My external hard drive dosent work or being recognized from the pc and i cant get my files back without any possible way. PLEASE HELP