How To Recover Data From Portable Hard Drive

Recover data from portable hard drive step by step, simple and easy!

Do you know how to recover data from portable hard drive and how to recover data from external hard drive or hard disk? If no, then you need to read through the following lines. Nowadays, portable hard drive is widely used to transfer, store and back up data, which facilitates life and work a lot. Though a portable hard drive is not the most important part of a computer, it might be the most important part to you. Why? It contains your data like photos, daily shot videos, movies, and other useful stuff, which records valuable moments or important working files.

Still like other data storage mediums, data loss happens to portable hard drives; data might be deleted or formatted by mistaken, viruses attacking and so on. What's worse, you don't have a backup copy of lost data. However, thanks to the new data recovery technology, it is possible to recover data from portable hard drives as long as you use excellent data recovery software and take correct steps. CuteRecovery is the right choice, for it can recover data from portable hard drives due to deletion, format, raw partition, virus attack, system crash, etc.

Here's how to recover data from portable hard drive:

Now let's begin recovering data from portable hard drive

Step 1 - connect the portable hard drive to computer and check whether it can be accessed

The portable hard drive, connected to computer, can be seen in My Computer or Disk Management, as below:

If the portable hard drive can be accessed by computer, then you can follow steps below to recover data from portable hard drive.

Step 2 - Get CuteRecovery started

Get CuteRecovery started to bring the main interface as shown below:

Step 3 - Choose an appropriate data recovery mode

It is important to choose an appropriate data recovery mode when you recover data from portable hard drive. CuteRecovery provides five data recovery modes which can be seen on the main interface clearly. Select one data recovery mode according to the actual data loss situation and then CuteRecovery enters next step:

Select the portable hard drive, and click the button "Next", then CuteRecovery starts scanning the portable hard drive.

Step 4 - Preview and filter lost files

After finishing scanning, CuteRecovery sorts out and lists many files, and yet it provides a powerful file preview function which allows you to find out and make sure whether these lost files can be recovered successfully before you actually recover data from portable hard drive.

It's amazing that CuteRecovery supports previewing so many file types, such as txt files, Microsoft Office Document files, pictures, videos, audios, etc., which is rarely available in other data recovery software. The following picture shows CuteRecovery is previewing an rmvb file

Step 5 - Copy files

Check files you want to recover and click the button "Next" to copy them out, as the following picture:

Set a target folder to save these recovered files and then click the button "Next", as shown below:

Then CuteRecovery starts copying files, as follows:

By now, the process of recovering data from portable hard drive is completed.

Tips on how to recover data from portable hard drive

1. Stop using the portable hard drive immediately after data loss, otherwise lost data might be overwritten, which may cause the failure of data recovery;
2. If the portable hard drive has some sort of mechanical issue, it is advised that you send it to a professional data recovery company.