File recovery from hard drive

The one thing that most cases of software data loss have in common is recoverability. There are many capable data recovery tools that you can use to recover external hard drives after a software data loss without any expert knowledge.

In the next chapter, we recommend our top 10 favorite tools for recovering external hard drives. This often happens after a sudden voltage spike. Inside the hard drive are special diodes that act as fuses. A voltage spike may cause these diodes to blow, making the hard drive seem as if it were dead and all data were lost.

Clicking sounds are often an indication of serious hard drive damage. The head may be stuck on a platter, scratching it violently as the disk controller attempts to move it. A scratched platter usually means an irreversible data loss. Because the gap between the hard drive heads and platters is so small, they can literally stick to each other.

A hard drive recovery service center with a well-equipped, dust-free lab should be able to solve this problem, for a hefty price. The damage can be extremely localized, perhaps affecting only the boot sector, or it can be widespread.

The good news is that data recovery tools such as Disk Drill can easily recover data from inaccessible hard drives and help you spot growing file corruption before it gets out of hand. When your computer is unable to detect a hard drive which you know is otherwise in a good working order, it could mean that the hard drive is not compatible with your motherboard.

During the Windows XP era, there were many computer viruses designed to inflict as much damage as possible by deleting the data stored on hard drives. Fortunately, this type of malware, short for malicious software, is much less common today, but malware still remains a huge threat.

In recent years, ransomware has emerged as one of the biggest causes of data loss, encrypting important data and demanding a hefty ransom of its decryption. Software programmers still make many of the same mistakes as they did several years ago.

The same, of course, also applies to computer users. Even the latest and greatest hard drives are not immune to physical damage. Data recovery software is your best bet when it comes to recovering data from logically damaged hard drives. In this article, we list our top 10 favorite HDD recovery tools, and we encourage you to make your own choice.

For the purposes of this recovery guide, we are going to focus only on the number one hard drive recovery tool we know: Disk Drill. Disk Drill runs on Windows and macOS, and the free version lets you preview an unlimited number of lost files. As you can see, data recovery with Disk Drill is a matter of three simple steps, so you have absolutely nothing to be afraid of, especially considering that Disk Drill can preview all deleted data for free.

Unfortunately, not all data loss situations can be addressed at home with DIY data recovery software. Instead, here are just three manual HDD recovery fixes that are most likely to deliver the desired results:. And the hard drive failure symptoms are varied. When you try to access a hard drive, the following things may happen:. Those symptoms show that your hard drive is failing or has been failed. And at this critical moment, you have no choice but to do hard disk failure recovery immediately.

According to the survey results, hard disk failure is not a rare issue, it happens all the time around us. And from part 1 to part 3, I will show you how to recover data from failed hard drive in detail with this tool. There is a user who asks for the best software for data recovery from the possibly failed hard drive in the forum:. The drive is recognized by the BIOS, and Windows sees the drive and assigns a drive letter - but indicates that the disk is unformatted when you try to access it.

It was formatted with NTFS. What's the best software to try and attempt data recovery nowadays? Can anyone recommend something good? In this case, the user can see this drive in the computer, but when he tries to access it, the system prompts that the disk is unformatted. That is to say, his access to the drive is denied. So he wants to get the best software to recover data from damaged hard drive. In general, hard drive failure occurs suddenly, without leaving you any time to respond or prepare.

This is a question bothering lots of people. After taking these factors into consideration, I think I am obligated to introduce the best software to you and then discuss the price and how to recover data from crashed hard disk.

In this part, my theme is — the steps to recover data from a failed hard drive. I will explain this from two perspectives:. Here, in the following content, I will take the Free Edition and the Personal Deluxe license as an example to show you how to recover from hard drive failure on Windows in 2 cases.

Disk Drill has an intuitive interface that allows users to quickly recover their lost files. Its recovery capabilities also attract more experienced computer users. The tool provides additional data protection tools for free that can help you recover recently deleted files quickly. The Recovery Vault feature enables you to designate folders and files for enhanced protection.

You can create a byte-level backup of a drive that can be used for the recovery of failing storage devices. But, you can only recover MB of data for free. Besides, the scanning takes a longer time compared with the previous equivalents and the files found are fewer. Wise Data Recovery is a free data recovery tool that helps to recover lost photos, videos, audio files, documents, and more from local hard drives and removable devices like external hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, digital cameras, mobile phones, and MP3 players.

With advanced algorithms, Wise Data Recovery performs well to retrieve lost data from supported devices. Limitations on the free version: Unlimited free recovery. You cannot run RAW recovery and deep scan with the free version. Wise Data Recovery allows you to recover lost files on your Windows system bit and bit. It has been developed to work on Windows 10 and other Windows operating systems, from Windows XP and up.

The free version allows you to run a quick scan and recover recently deleted files. If you want to recover permanently deleted files from Windows 10, this freeware may not work well. The user interface of Wise Data Recovery is straightforward, so even less experienced users shouldn't have much trouble figuring it out.

We appreciate the ability to preview deleted files before recovery and display detailed information about them, including file headers. Ontrack EasyRecovery is one of the top choices for disk data recovery. Limitations on the free version: 1GB of free recovery.

Ontrack is straightforward file recovery software for missing or deleted photos, videos, and more from all types of computer storage devices. Utilize quick scan and deep scan to optimize your recovery.

It also provides manual data recovery and repair with experts. The cost depends on your data and the difficulty of the recovery process. It is a little hard to download. You need to give your email and personal information before you can download it.

Recover My Files is a reliable data recovery software tool that is exclusive to Windows. Documents, photos, videos, audio files, and emails are all recoverable. Recover My Files is a data recovery program that uses file carving to extract lost files from unallocated clusters. Recovery is based on the interpretation of file content, usually through the process of reverse engineering a file type.

The recovery process is not that easy as explained. The old-fashioned interface makes it hard for common users. Unfortunately, the last version of Recover My Files was v6, and it's clear that its original developers have abandoned it.

You cannot get any updates. Photo Rec recovers images from all kinds of digital devices such as computers, digital cameras, cell phones, tablets, memory cards, external hard drives, and more. It has powerful file recovery capabilities and support for a wide range of platforms. This open-source data recovery software can recover more than file extensions. PhotoRec is free and open-source. It uses text-based data recovery techniques to get the lost files from a system.

It is designed for experienced users with its text-only user interface. PhotoRec can measure up to many paid data recovery software applications. You don't need to worry about the price and limitations. TestDisk is also an open resource application that is used to recover lost partitions.

It is able to recover deleted partitions from hard drives and fix the partition table, recover the boot sector, and more. Since TestDisk is open source software, you can inspect, modify, and enhance it provided you know how to do it.

This freeware solution is only applicable to partition recovery. It is a command-line tool that supports many operating systems and filesystems. The app is still supported by its developer and is available in a bootable version.

If you lost your partition, you can run this software. Otherwise, you can try other free data recovery software.