How To Recover Data From Corrupted Hard Drive

A hard drive can get corrupted due to various reasons like physical damage, power failure, virus attacks, and more. However, no matter what causes your hard drive to fail as soon as it gets corrupted you can no longer access your valuable data stored in it. Moreover, from the old school mechanical hard drives to the latest SSDs all are subject to corruption so if you think your data is secure in an SSD then you are wrong.

The crux of the matter is, all hard drives are bound to damage or corrupt today or tomorrow, so you should always keep a backup of your important files. But if you already have a corrupted hard drive and didn’t get the time to create the backup then the only way remains to access your data is either by fixing your corrupted hard drive or by recovering data from it using data recovery software. We will discuss both methods in this article.

Fix Your Corrupted Hard Drive

Repairing the hard drive is only feasible when there are minor issues in the drive that are causing it to fail. If the hard drive is physically damaged then it’s nearly impossible to repair it on your own. Nonetheless, you can try using these methods mentioned on the data recovery adviser for fixing a corrupted hard drive to see whether you can revive your drive or not.

One simple thing you can do to repair your corrupted HDD or SSD is by running a check disk command on CMD. This command checks your disk for errors and can also fix some of them. Here’s how you can use this command to fix your internal as well as external connected hard drive.

Note: Before running the command you must know the drive letter of your hard drive. Like in our case it’s the letter E, you may have a different drive letter so check accordingly.

Repair Corrupted Hard Drive Using CMD

1. Run CMD as administrator on your Windows PC. You can type CMD in the search box on the toolbar to find it.

2. Now once the CMD is open you can type in the command CHKDSK :E /R /F. You can replace E with your drive letter, the rest of the command remains the same for all. Like if your drive letter is H then the command you need to type is CHKDSK :H /R /F. After entering the command hit Enter and wait for the scan process to complete.

Once the scan is completed you can close the CMD window and check your hard drive whether it is accessible or not. This method works well for fixing small logical errors but if your hard drive is severely corrupted or has bad sectors then it won’t help you much.

If you are not able to fix your corrupted hard drive then you can take the help of a professional data recovery software that supports recovery from corrupted devices. This way you will at least retrieve your valuable data from your damaged drive even if you cannot repair it.

Recover Data From Corrupted Hard Drive

You can use any professional data recovery software for recovering data from an inaccessible Hard drive but we personally prefer Stellar Data Recovery Software over others due to its ease of use and high accuracy. If you already have any other data recovery software with you, you can follow similar steps to recover files from your corrupted hard drive using it as well.

1. Connect your hard drive to your computer Via USB cable.

2. Now you can launch the software and on its dashboard, you can select the location from where you want to recover the data. In this case, we will select the externally connected hard drive. Now run the deep/advance scan because recovering data from a corrupted hard drive using a quick scan is not possible. To run the scan click on the Scan button on the bottom right side of the dashboard.

3. Wait for the scanning process to complete. Based on your device’s storage capacity and complexity, it may even take hours to recover data from it. But if you can’t sit for too long then you can pause the scan in half as there is a feature of pause and resume on Stellar Data Recovery Software that lets you complete the scan in multiple sessions. This feature is also available in other professional data recovery software so you can make use of it.

4. Once all the data is recovered you can select the files that you want to restore and hit on the Recover button to save those files on your computer’s hard drive.

Don’t forget to check the preview of the files before recovering them in order to be sure that you are restoring the right files among others. And with this, you have successfully restored data from a damaged hard drive.

Final Words

Recovering data once your drive gets corrupted is very much possible but you should not take it for granted. Data recovery is a complicated process so you can’t be 100% sure that you will every time retrieve your files from a corrupted hard drive.

So to be on the safer side you must keep a backup of your important files and you should also upgrade to a new hard drive once your existing hard drive gets old. It is recommended that you must change a hard drive every four years of time to keep your data secure. With that being said we hope you were able to recover your valuable data from your corrupted hard drive and are satisfied with our efforts.

FAQs

1. How Long Do Hard Drives Last?

Depends on your usage and brand of the hard drive but they generally last between three to five years.

2. How Often Should I Replace My Hard Drive?

You should change the hard drive every three to four years.

3. Can You Recover Data From A Dead Hard Drive?

Yes, you can recover data from a dead or corrupted hard drive using professional data recovery software.

4. Can A Hard Drive Be Repaired?

As long as there is no physical damage you can repair a hard disk but it is a complicated process.