How To Recover Data From Unreadable External Hard Drive (Windows and Mac)

Yesterday, I plugged in my external hard drive and tried to click on it. A message popped up saying drive is not accessible and drive’s file directory is corrupted or unreadable. So I unplugged it and plugged it back in. Then I got the message asking if I want to format it. I even tried inserting it into different computers, tried going to disk management and checked the settings, nothing worked and now I don’t know what to do... I have created a backup of most crucial files on my external hard drive. How do I get the data that is on the drive back? I cannot risk losing my files? Please help!

Unreadable external hard drives are not often but it is a complex scenario. Unfortunately, it is impossible or highly complicated to manually recover data from unreadable or corrupted external hard drives. Nevertheless, one could recover data from unreadable external hard drives with a little help from experts. So refer to the rest of the article for expert’s suggestions on how to recover data from unreadable external hard drives.

Why External Hard Drive becomes unreadable? (Windows and Mac)

Following are the reasons why your external hard drive became unreadable.

• Interruptions during the formatting or re-formatting partitions on the external HDD
• When your external HDD is severely infected with virus / malware threats, there are chances of your external HDD becoming unreadable
• Use of incompatible third party applications for creating, deleting or re-sizing existing partitions on your external hard drive
• Sudden power loss when the data is being transferred from the external hard drive might lead to file system corruption which in turn makes the hard drive unreadable
• Presence of excessive bad sectors on the external HDD will also make your drive unreadable
• This might be unfamiliar but when you have more than one hard drive your Windows will fail to detect the second hard drvie

Can I Recover data from unreadable external hard drive?

Yes, you can recover data from an unreadable external hard drive. But make sure you act fast and avoid usage of any unreliable method to perform unreadable external hard drive recovery.

Master Boot Record acts like an interface between your external hard drive and the Computer OS. Any damage to it will cause an unreadability of the external drives. Yet the data stored on the drive is completely safe.

Regardless, of the reasons, your first priority should be to recover the data from the unreadable external drive. The only possible way to access an unreadable storage drive is with the help of Remo Data recovery software.

“Remo Recover is developed by testing in real-time data loss scenarios, which ensures to recover data from unreadable, corrupt, and damaged hard drives easily. Download now”

“Do You Know: Only in U.S.A about 0.2 million hard drives fail every week costing millions worth of damages in business

Steps For Recovering Data From Unreadable Hard Drive (Windows and Mac)

By following a few simple steps, Remo Recover can easily recover data from unreadable hard drives in a couple of minutes. Connect the external hard drive to your system and download Remo Recover install it and follow the below explained steps to perform unreadable hard drive recovery:

1. Once you have installed Remo Recover (Windows/Mac), run the software.

2. Select “Recover Partitions” from the options displayed.

3. Select the drive representing the external hard drive from which data is to be transferred.

4. The Software starts scanning the entire drive. Wait, until it’s over. A list of all the recovered items appears.

Preview each one of the files and select the required ones for saving.

5. Mention the destination folder to save your files.

Since you have recovered data from an unreadable hard drive, you can repair the hard drive and make it reusable. Move to the next section of the article to repair unreadable hard drive.

How to Repair Unreadable Hard drive?

a) Use command prompt:

If your external hard drive is not readable due to minor corruption, then you can use command prompt function to make it readable. Follow the below steps to fix unreadable hard drive;

1. Type cmd in the Windows Search box.
2. Right-click Command Prompt and choose Run as administrator.
3. Type CHKDSK G: /f /r /x hit Enter.

Note: Replace G with your unreadable external hard drive letter.

b) Format unreadable external hard drive:

As we discussed in the previous sections of this article damaged MBR is the reason. Hence, in order to repair unreadable hard drive, you need to format it with a new file system which creates a new MBR. However, formatting unreadable hard drive will erase recoverable data. So it is strongly recommended to recover data from unreadable hard drive before repairing it.

• Go to Windows explorer right-click on unreadable hard drive and tap on the Format option.
• In the format dialogue box select the desired file system (NTFS, FAT32, exFAT…..) and tap on Start.

Once the format process is completed, your hard drive should be readable.

How to Avoid Unreadable Hard Drive

• Keep your antivirus updated from time to time.
• Have an interruption-free work environment to avoid any kind of disturbances while working with your hard drive
• Bad sectors inevitable in all types of storage devices. However, you keep a check on them by using “chkdsk” and avoid any possibility of an unreadable hard drive.

Benefits of Using Remo Recover

Remo hard drive recovery software (Windows / Mac) is a robust tool, capable of recovering data from your external hard drives which have become corrupted and unreadable for some reason. The utility is incorporated with powerful algorithms that scans your entire external drive repeatedly and extracts all your data from it.

• Restores data from hard drives with FAT32, FAT 16, NTFS, NTFS 5, HFS + / HFS X partitions.
• Capable of recovering more than 300+ different types and formats of files from a corrupted and unreadable hard drive
• Can perform Raw Signature search to increase the recovery speed
• Capable of identifying the type of the files after recovery with the aid of the file’s unique signature
• It allows you to save the recovered files at any location of their choice that too in a compressed ZIP format
• It could easily save the recovered information and allows you to resume the process later when needed
• Data recovery software offers a free preview of the recovered files with its free trial version
• The tool can also be used to recover data from bad hard drive, just click on the link provided to know the perfect solution

Summary

If you have gone through this article you should be clear about why your hard drive is becoming unreadable. Nevertheless, repairing them would be easy. However, before attempting to repair, recover data from unreadable hard drive to ensure the safety of your crucial information.