Working with large amounts of information? You know the desperate moment when you realize that you need some data that you deleted a long time ago. This is the topic of this article : Top methods to recover lost data from WD external hard drive. First lets start with some general data recovery tips, valid for all type of data devices, PC’s, Mac’s, phones.
Use cloud storage. For most regular users, cloud storage services represent the most reliable way how to protect themselves against data loss. Providers of these services are commonly located on the other side of the planet, and they use sophisticated backup systems at their storage facilities, resulting in multiple degrees of redundancy. Best of all, services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive have free plans with generous storage limits, which are more than enough for text documents.
Most recovery apps start as a free trial, then will charge you if a scan indicates that it can likely recover your files. Sounds like extortion, but the idea is that we’d be even more mad if we paid for the service, then it told us that it couldn’t work. EaseUS and Recuva both come recommended, and we’ve tested and can vouch for Prosoft Data Rescue and Ontrack (see below). These apps scan the affected drives (or USB sticks, whatever) and let you search for whatever you’re missing by file type, name, etc. They’ll also show you recently deleted files, and tell you how recoverable they are. The process is as intuitive as any modern app, though the results are never guaranteed.
On being struck with a logical failure, the hard drive won’t make any noises, but it won’t boot up or let you access the data. And here’s the good part. When a hard drive fails, or you accidentally format it or delete data from it, the data doesn’t disappear. It stays on the drive until something else is overwritten on it. Usually, with a properly working hard drive, all data has its own dedicated storage space. Deleted data or formatted storage or in this case, storage on the failed hard drive is marked as “fit for overwriting”.
Having covered the ‘deleted data’ section of data recovery is all good and well, but what happens if your drive is not even being detected by your machine? Or your machine can see the drive, but just hangs when you try to access it? What about if the drive is completely dead and won’t even spin up? Let’s briefly cover the main components of a drive, see which components can fail, and what symptoms each failure might exhibit. PCB: This is the (often green) circuit board attached to the bottom of your drive. It houses the main controller (the equivalent of your computer’s CPU) along with many other electronic controllers. This is the interface that turns your 0s and 1s from the platter into usable data that your computer can understand.
Secure and reliable data backups are best done in the cloud. Use a reputable cloud service such as Google or Amazon to mirror your data from your computer to a secure virtual server. Cloud storage is very cheap and provides you with risk protection through automated backups, so set your data to back up automatically. You can also use external hard drives to create backups of your backups for extra peace of mind. The first line of defence for a computer should be a login PIN number, which offers a layer of protection against theft. Another tactic is to install (and update frequently) a firewall program and a well-regarded antivirus and malware utility. You can also encrypt your data, which makes it nearly impossible to read unless in possession of the encryption key. Update the OS frequently to pull in the latest security patches and use multifaceted tools that will warn you about possible phishing emails, unsecured websites and other hacking attempts. Recovery should always be seen as a last resort that’s used to pull the most important data. It’s best to treat a laptop or desktop as simply a gateway for reaching the internet and a way to power software. With the cloud, there’s no longer any reason to use a computer as a storage device. So, if something goes wrong with the machine, then simply buy a new one and dive back into work.
Sometimes, when we go to look for information in some of our hard drives and we do not find it, we believe that we erase it and we cannot recover it. In most cases, if you delete information from a device, it is not possible to recover it without the proper tools. The good thing is that we know that tool and we can help you, so we show you how to recover deleted files which were deleted long time ago – even you deleted them 2 or 4 years ago. Read extra info at Deleted file recovery.