With the advent of digital cameras, the process of creating photos has become much easier, and the average user is much closer to the photo industry. Previously, in order to see photographs, it was necessary to print them, with the aim of which, by all means, go to a photo salon. Now, photography is very accessible and everyone can take pictures without having to have any special knowledge.
External hDD - This is the same device as any other hard drive, which is prone to breakdowns and malfunctions. And it’s very useful to know how to deal with such problems. This article will be interesting both to those who were in this situation, and to other users of external hard drives.
Reasons why an external hard drive is not detected
Most of us use external hard drive to store data backup but external hard disks not always suitable for such purposes. That is why experts recommend creating several copies of important data on different storage media. And so the question of uncertainty or unreadability external hard computer drive is so important.
The external hard drive may not be detected by the computer in such cases:
- After sudden power surges during data transfer
- As a result physical damage
- As a result of a malfunction in the operating system during device interaction
- After being infected with a virus or malware software
- Due to wear hard drive due to congestion
- Deletions system files disk or operating system damage.
If the hard drive is not correctly detected by the system, then after connecting it to the computer, you may not see anything. No sounds or automatic opening of the root directory of the disk, it may not even be visible in the Device Manager. Sometimes the following message may be displayed: “To use a disk in drive F: format it first. Do you want to format it? ” In such a situation, the only way out may seem formatting hard drive. But in this case, all data on the disk will be deleted.
What needs to be done in order to restore disk health without losing data?
What can be done in such a situation?
Before giving such a disk to a service center, you can try the following:
- Try connecting the hard drive to a different USB port. If after that it will be detected by the computer, then the problem is in the faulty USB port.
- Connect the hard drive to another computer.
- Change the letter of the hard drive (change its name). For this:
- Open the folder "This computer"
- Look at the letters that already indicate the other drives
- Click in the top menu of the “Map Network Drive” folder window and select the “Drive” menu
- From the Disk menu, select a drive letter that is not used
- Click “Browse” and select an unrecognized hard drive and click “Ok”
- Restart your computer and reconnect the drive.
The last point is to make the hard drive recognizable, but the computer may still ask you to format it. Do not panic, data will not be lost even after formatting.
Recovering data from a formatted external hard drive
After you format the hard drive, do not write anything to it. Do not save any data to it or give it access to other programs and devices. All your files are recoverable until they are overwritten with new data.
After the formatting process is completed, immediately disconnect the hard drive from the computer and boot. Run the program and in the main menu select the external hard drive from which you want to recover files.
Double click on it. In the next window, select the type of analysis you want and click next. After the analysis process is complete, you will see a list of folders and files that are to be restored. By clicking on any of the files in the right window, you can see its preview.
Mark the files necessary for recovery and move them to the recovery bin. Then click the restore button. A window opens asking you to specify a method and path to restore files. Select the required functions and click next. After the process of saving files is completed, they can be viewed in the appropriate folder.
Remember to have at least two backups of important data. Other than that, do not interfere with hard work drive during its operation. But in case you find yourself in a similar situation, do not panic - use our tips to restore your data.
Hello everybody! So we have already saved more than one person from data loss on your external drive if it is connected. In this article, we consider a method and program for recovering data from a hard drive, flash drive, external storage and other devices after formatting, unsuccessful extraction and disconnection, and also if the method of checking your problematic drive by standard Windows tools did not help.
So I do not advise anyone to be in this situation: a flash drive, a hard drive, external usb for some reason your drive does not open or you accidentally formatted all the data, and the information on the device is vital to you. What to do? The main thing is not to shake, everything will be okay. Consider an example of both full and selective data recovery.
How to recover data from media?
1. If the hard drive or flash drive requires formatting then you (only if this method did not help, move on).
2. If you are not sure and the data on the media is extremely important - contact specialists. All your files will be restored in the wrong order and not with the names that you had before. All pictures, files, documents from 1 to infinity. Unfortunately, this is the principle of all data recovery programs. Otherwise, move on.
Download the data recovery program and run it. We see such a window in front of us (the program is in English but it's not scary). In this window you need to select your drive, it does not matter whether it is a hard drive or a flash drive, and press the SCAN button.
The program will chant your drive and try to collect all the information about the data that was on the hard disk before the consequences that led you to this page. The scan duration directly depends on the volume of the hard drive - the larger the volume, the longer the treasured and nervous process of waiting.
Upon completion of the scan, the program will pop up the following window:
In this window, we are interested in the EXTRA FOUND FILES line and we left-click on it 2 times to open it and go to the next interface 
and finally we got to the treasured data recovery menu. In the left window you can choose how full recovery, so partial, and right you can even see what the recovery program found on your flash drive. By checking the boxes for the files we need, we select what needs to be restored and press RECOVER, then select the path 
where to restore it all and click ok. If you need to restore everything - select RECOVER ALL. I want to warn you right away that if you have a hard drive or a large flash drive, then the places where you want to save the recovered data should be almost 2 times larger. If there is a shortage of places, I propose to restore partially. Let's look at examples of what each folder is responsible for: Gzip archive - archives that were on the hard drive; jpeg image - pictures; mpeg layer 3 audio - mp3 music; microsoft word 2007 — word documents and so on by analogy.
In the end result, you get the following completion window:
To summarize: we just recovered data from your hard drive, flash drive or removable drive. Yes! the files were restored in an uncomfortable form for us, now we have to poke around for a long time to look for the information we need. But! We have done this for free. In services, the service of recovering data from media costs about 1000 rubles per 1 gigabyte (for example, 20GB \u003d 20,000 rubles - a lot).
Now, any of you will be able to recover information from the media even if you deleted all the data from the hard drive or formatted the USB flash drive. Data recovery is possible - even after formatting, but you have to sweat! By the way, you can watch the video instruction below! Good luck !!!
An external hard drive is more vulnerable than stationary media. It is constantly being transferred from place to place, exposed to environmental influences, risks of falling and improper connection. Therefore, it fails much more often. If at the next connection to the computer it cannot be detected operating system, then this may indicate damage to its file system. Consider how to recover external media without formatting.
Causes of Removable Disk Issues
- The file system is corrupted.
- Happened software failure devices.
- The removable hard drive has been exposed to the virus.
- The device was not properly disconnected from the computer.
- Careless handling of the drive, mechanical damage.
Is it possible to restore with your own hands portable hard drive without formatting? In most cases, unless the device has been mechanically damaged, the data on it can be restored. To do this, consider 2 ways.
Windows Media Recovery
The external hard drive is checked for errors on it. For this, it starts utility Chkdsk, which is part of Windows. To run it, you need to command line register the command "cmd". After confirming the command, a console appears on the monitor, where the line “chkdsk h: / f” is written, in which “h” is the letter of your removable media.
If, when trying to check, the computer displays a message stating that it is not possible to check at the moment, then you must agree to the offer to check the selected disk during the next reboot of the system.
You can choose another way to check the disk for errors, more visual and accessible. To do this, follow these steps:
In most cases, after a scan, the hard drive will completely recover its structure without formatting. After the treatment, it will start on its own, and all data will be visible on the monitor.
Recovering an external drive using R-Studio
You can recover external media without formatting. This utility works with all known file systems, recovers information from deleted and damaged partitions, works with encrypted files.
After starting the program, all disks will be displayed in its window.
All media connected to the computer will be visible on the left. Media recovery is performed in this order:
Since they occupy a very large volume, a decent capacity hard drive is needed. With deficiency free space only part of the information can be restored to the media. The restore operation begins with the appearance of the following window: 
The above methods can restore information from any external media, whether it's a removable hard drive or an ordinary flash drive. This information It is useful to those who have the desire to take care of restoring their device without contacting service centers.
