A corrupted or damaged hard drive can spell disaster for you and possibly for your whole company, especially if you are not in the habit of creating backup files. However, there is still hope for a corrupted or inaccessible USB or hard drive. You can either bring the device to a data recovery professional or perform a recovery procedure yourself. If you want to save money, it is advisable that you try to recover your files on your own. This tutorial will show you how to recover files from an inaccessible USB or hard drive.
Two Types of Damaged Disks
It is important to note that there are two types of disk problems. The type of damage to your USB or hard disk will determine if you can recover files on your own or if you need the assistance of a data recovery expert.
1. Hardware issues: Errors caused by hardware problems will require the help of a data recovery expert. When your computer does not detect your storage device, chances are that you have a hardware issue on your drive. Abnormal noises are indicators that there is something physically wrong with your hard drive or USB. If you notice that any physical part of the storage device is missing or has been removed, then you may have to bring your storage drive to a professional.
2. Software issues: If your computer detects your storage device but will not allow you access to it or if you are prompted with error messages, then there is still hope that you can fix your storage device on your own. Errors on your drive may be caused by power outages, forced shutdowns, unsafe removal of storage devices, deteriorating storage sectors, or other software issues. Using data recovery software, there is a good chance that you will be able to recover a hard drive or USB with software issues.
How to Recover Files from an Inaccessible USB or Hard Drive
To recover files from an inaccessible USB or hard drive, follow these steps:
1.If your storage device is not shown in My Computer, use the search function by either clicking the search button in the lower-left corner of your taskbar (Windows 10) or through the search function in the Start button (Windows 7).
2.Type in diskmgmt.msc.
3.Click on the first search result that is shown: diskmgmt.msc Microsoft Common Console Document.
4.Disk Management will open. Check if your storage drive is displayed. If your USB or hard drive is not shown, then the device may need to be checked by a recovery professional. If the storage drive is displayed, proceed to the next step.
5.Download and install a data recovery software. For this tutorial’s purposes, I have used Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery – Professional. The software has worked wonders for me.
6.The next steps may be software-specific, but the logic of process should be the same. Since we downloaded Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery, the next steps will be specific to your software. However, the steps should be similar on other data recovery programs. Start with opening the installed program.
7.Choose what data you prefer to recover. You can choose between three types: Multimedia files only, Documents, or Folders & Emails only. You can also choose to recover Everything.
8.Click on the Next button.
9.Select the drive that you want to scan.
10.Click on the Scan button. The scanning process will start right away. You can choose to wait until the scan is complete, or you can stop at any point by clicking on the Stop button.
11.Details of the scanned files will now be displayed. Click the Back button or the close button.
12.A prompt will be displayed asking you to save the scanned data.
13.Click on the Yes button.
14.The Save scan information dialog box will be displayed. Select the folder where you want to save the scanned file.
15.Click Save. The scanned information will be saved in a DAT extension. You are done.
Note: The FREE version of Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery allows users to recover up to 1 GB of files, data, multimedia files, and other types of files. The software recovers data from various storage devices such as USB drives, DVDs and CDs, hard drives, and memory cards. The software can also create an image file for the whole partition for file recovery.
To summarize, you can use data recovery software, like Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery, to:
– recover inaccessible drives
– recover files, multimedia files, and other data.
– search for files data on your inaccessible drives
– do a selected or full data recovery
– recover files from hard drives, USB, CD, DVD, portable drives, and other data storage devices
Now you know how to recover files from inaccessible USB or hard drive. If you have questions with any of the steps above, let us know in the comments section.
