An external hard drive is used to store your photos, videos, important documents and other data which are rarely used. However, there are situations when your computer does not read or does not recognize an external hard drive. In this case, the first thing you need to figure out what happened to it.

External HDD loss reasons

For starters, you need to know what could lead to the loss of files on an external hard drive.

This information will help you to avoid such situations in the future.

• Power failure.

A sudden power failure can cause all external hard drives to malfunction.

• Damage by a virus or other malware.

In this situation, your data is not damaged; it is simply encrypted. Often for the return of your files, hackers demand money.

Do not be fooled by this trick; use external drive repair software.

It is safe and faster.

• Manufacturing defects.

Even reputable manufacturers sometimes produce defective external hard drives.

And this spoilage is most often detected in the first year of using the device.

Therefore, the first year, it is best to store backups of data in another safe place as well.

• Mechanical damage.

Without going into details, on the external hard drive there are at least two fragile parts: the head and the air filter.

Damage to the head is often associated with careless use of a storage device, as, for example, when you throw a hard disk onto a bed.

If the air filter passes particles of dust, this in turn will damage the head and it will stop working correctly.

• Using an external hard drive in extreme conditions.

Temperatures above 60 degrees Celsius can lead to a malfunction of the electronic board.

This will break the entire hard disk.

And, what is worse, no external hard drive repair software will help you to recover data.

External hard drive repair software

DiskInternals Partition Recovery is the best software to repair an external hard drive. This software works on each of the sections on the hard disk.

It will restore files of absolutely any type, and there are no restrictions on the volumes of documents being restored. All recovered files can be saved on any drives (including network drives) visible to the host operating system. The easy-to-use Recovery Wizard will help you at all stages of restoring an external hard drive. DiskInternals Partition Recovery allows you to recover and view all your recovered documents for free before saving. You just need to download this application and you will learn more about the many advantages of DiskInternals Partition Recovery.

A quick step-by-step guide for external hard disk repair tool on Windows 7:

1. 1. Download and run DiskInternals Partition Recovery external hard drive repair software.

1. 2. Select the appropriate location to scan.
2. 3. Scan the hard disk. It will take some time.
3. 4. Preview and restore hard disk partitions. After reviewing all the recovered documents, you will be sure that they are restored.

1. 5. Preservation. For this action, you need to purchase a license and enter the license key. It is better not to save the recovered documents in their original location.

Check & repair external hard drive errors with Windows

You can also try built-in Windows tools at first to check and fix the hard disk error. If you succeed, you can easily access your data. See below for instructions on how to do this.

1. 1. Open this computer, then right-click on the external hard drive you want to check, and click the Properties button.
2. 2. Then click Tools, then Check.
3. 3. You will see a new window, “Check disk parameters”. Select one of the options to check and repair the hard disk. Then click Start.

As a result of the whole process, your external hard disk or hard disk partition should work correctly. Now try to access the stored documents on an external storage device.

No luck? Try to repair external hard drive with the command line

You can use the command line as an external hard drive repair tool, as it is very good at fixing your file system and storage. But if you need to restore any data from a damaged external hard drive, it is not enough. The command line will reduce your data to 512 KB, so this is not the best option. Therefore, this method should be used only after saving data from the device.

To use the command line, press the key combination ⊞ Win and X / Win (depending on the Windows version). You can also click the Start button.

Then enter “cmd” in the search field and press Enter. A new cmd.exe window will appear.

Click on it; you will see a line similar to this:

Then enter chkdsk [the drive letter]: parameter f or parameter r and press Enter.

It will look like this:

Note: d - is an example of diskis letter and there is a space between “d:” and “/”.

For reference:

- corrects errors on the external hard disk.

- corrects the sector on external the hard disk.

The scan of your external hard drive begins. This external HDD repair tool is unpredictable, but the file system needs to be fixed.

We hope you choose the right external hdd repair tool and you will not regret your choice. Good luck!