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9 August 2023  John Weaver  Senior Program Developer
 

Summary
Learn how to recover data and repair a damaged mobile hard disk with this comprehensive guide. Don't lose valuable information stored on your portable storage device!



Table of contents

table iconI. Symptoms and causes of mobile hard disk damage
table iconII. How to recover data from mobile hard disk?
table iconIII. How to repair the failure of the mobile hard disk?
how to recover data from damaged external hard disk

I. Symptoms and causes of mobile hard disk damage

Symptoms of mobile hard disk failure generally manifest as:
● The hard disk does not respond or makes abnormal noises. Please refer to the detection and repair method of abnormal hard disk noise.
● The hard disk prompts that it needs to be formatted before use.
● The system prompts that the file or directory is damaged.
● The data in the hard disk is lost.
● The computer does not recognize the hard drive, or the file system becomes RAW. Please check the detection and repair method of RAW hard disk.
● The hard disk partition suddenly disappears and becomes unallocated.
can't access hard drive
can't access hard drive
There are a number of reasons that can cause issues with your external hard drive, preventing it from functioning properly. Here are some possible causes of failure:
● Improper operation, directly unplug the connected mobile hard disk from the computer, but fail to eject it safely.
● Virus or malware infection.
● There are too many bad sectors on the hard disk.
● File system error. You can try to format the hard drive to fix this issue.
● Outdated/corrupted drivers. It is recommended to update the driver to solve it.
After understanding the reasons for the failure/damage of the mobile hard disk, you may have questions “Can the mobile hard disk be damaged and the data can be recovered?” , in fact, if the damage to the mobile hard disk is not very serious, and if the hard disk is found to be broken, it will stop storing new data, then the data in it may still be recovered. You can try to use professional data recovery software to scan and recover data, and then perform hard disk repair. However, it should be noted that data recovery is a remedial measure, and data recovery may not be successful due to hard disk component damage or data overwriting, so it is bestRegularly back up hard disk data to avoid loss of important data.

II. How to recover data from mobile hard disk?

1. What is Renee Undeleter?

Rene.E Laboratory ™ data recovery software It is a software specially used to restore various data files. When you accidentally delete important files, empty the recycle bin, or format the disk/storage, you can use this tool to retrieve the lost data. The software covers four functional modules, including file recovery, format recovery, partition recovery and image creation, which can help you solve all data loss problems in an all-round way.
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2. How to use Renee Undeleter to recover the data in the mobile hard disk?

Step 1: Connect the mobile hard disk to the computer, download and install Renee Undeleter on the computer, run Renee Undeleter , and select the (Partition Recovery) option on the main interface.
Note: Do not install on the disk that needs to restore data, so as not to cause data overwriting.
Select partition recovery option
Data recovery function introduction:
File recovery: Quickly retrieve files lost due to accidental deletion or emptying the recycle bin.
Format recovery: Quickly recover files lost due to inaccessible or formatted partitions.
Partition recovery: Partition information can be analyzed and obtained, and the entire partition can be fully scanned.
Create a mirror: A mirror can be created for a partition to back up the current partition state.

Step 2: Next select the hard drive that needs to recover data. After the selection is complete, click (Next).
Select target device for partition recovery
Step 3: Please wait patiently for the scan. This process will find out all the partitions that have existed in the hard disk, and then the “Select the partition you need to scan” window will pop up, and you can select a specific partition to scan. If not selected, all partitions will be scanned and it will take longer.
Select the appropriate partition to scan
Step 4: You can preview the files during the scanning process. If all the required files have been found, you can check the files to be restored, and then click the (Recover) button to restore the data to other disks of the computer.
Partition recovery scan result presentation

III. How to repair the failure of the mobile hard disk?

1. Run antivirus software

Sometimes viruses and malware can cause external hard drives to fail. Therefore, scanning and removing viruses with antivirus software may repair a damaged external hard drive. It is recommended to connect the mobile hard drive to a computer with anti-virus software installed, and scan the mobile hard drive with a reliable anti-virus software.

2. Check and fix hard disk errors in Windows 10/8/7 with Windows built-in tools

You can try to use Windows built-in tools to check and fix external hard drive errors. In Windows 10, 8 or 7 do the following:
Step 1: Connect the mobile hard disk to the computer, press (Windows icon + R key) on the keyboard, please enter (diskmgmt.msc) in the pop-up input box, and then click (OK) to enter the disk management.
Run window input diskmgmt.msc
Step 2: In Disk Management, right-click on the failed hard disk partition and select (Properties) on the menu.
click properties
Step 3: In the (Tools) column, select (Inspect).
Toolbar selection check
Step 4: If your system is Windows 7 or Windows 8, please check (Automatically repair file system errors) and (Scan and try to recover bad sectors), and Windows 10 automatically repairs all errors by default. Then wait for the inspection and repair to complete.
Tick Automatically fix file system errors and Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors
The function of hard disk error scanning is mainly to mark the space where bad sectors appear as unusable at the file system level, so as to prevent file data from being written into these unstable data storage spaces. If you want to completely solve the problem of bad sectors, you need to perform low-level formatting (not necessarily repairable) or replace the mobile hard disk.

3. Update the hard disk driver

If the mobile hard disk can be powered on, but cannot be opened and used normally, you can try to update the driver of the hard disk. Now let’s learn how to update the hard disk driver, the specific steps are as follows.
Step 1: Run the Windows computer, connect the hard disk to the computer, and then press the (Windows+R) keys on the keyboard at the same time to open the running window. After entering (devmgmt.msc), click the (OK) button to enter the Device Manager.
Enter devmgmt.msc
Step 2: Next, in the “Disk Drive”, right-click to select the target hard disk, and select the (Update Driver) option.
Select update driver
Step 3: Next, select the (Search automatically for updated driver software) option, and then follow the instructions in order to complete the update of the hard disk driver. After the driver update is complete, restart the device to see if the problem is resolved.
Select Search automatically for updated driver software

4. Re-format the mobile hard disk in disk management

You can try to reformat the mobile hard disk in disk management, this operation will erase all the data in the hard disk, please make sure you have made a backup of the data. Specific steps are as follows:
Step 1: Right-click the Start menu, click (Disk Management).
Click Disk Management
Step 2: Right click on the failed mobile hard disk and select (Format).
click format
Step 3: Select the file system. If the hard disk is only used in the Windows system, it is recommended to select the NTFS file system, check (Execute quick format), and click (OK). You can also check: Features and differences of FAT32, NTFS, exFAT to learn more.
Tick Perform quick format
Step 4: The formatting operation will prompt you to clear all the data in the mobile hard disk, click (OK), and then wait for the formatting to complete. If the mobile hard disk cannot be successfully formatted in Disk Management, you can also format the mobile hard disk through the diskpart command.
Format and click OK