Retrieve Encrypted Files from External Hard Drive

“Hello everyone, I own an external hard drive on which all my sensitive files are stored. Since, these files contain crucial information; I encrypted those files using Windows EFS to prevent unauthentic access. But recently while using the drive on my Windows desktop, I accidentally deleted few of these encrypted files and welcomed the unfriendly data loss. Can anyone please suggest me on how to recover encrypted files from external hard drive? Please help.”

External hard drives are the best storage device to hoard backup data and necessary files from one’s computer safely. Users can easily reserve any types of files on these portable hard drives and can access the files whenever required. Most of the users save very important files in external drives and encrypt them by specifying a password to prevent those files access by third persons. Encrypting files is the best way of securing data from unauthentic access. But if these files are lost or erased as mentioned in the above situation then user has to incur great loss of valuable information from these encrypted files.

Few other reasons of losing encrypted files from external hard drive are:

• Interrupted file transfer process: While moving encrypted files from external hard drive to system drive or to any other storage device, occurrence of disruptions like removal of external drive, power surge to system, improper use of Cut and Paste options, etc. can lead to loss of encrypted files that are in process
• Use of unreliable programs: Employing erratic third party utilities like defragmentation tool, repartitioning tool, antivirus program, etc. to accomplish respective tasks on external drive may sometimes cause missing or deletion of encrypted files
• User mistakes: Abrupt way of ejecting the external hard drive from system, connecting the drive to malware infected system, incomplete way of connecting the drive on system, etc will also add up to loss of password protected files and others from removable hard disk

As encrypted files hold vital information, losing any such file will be a disaster. Fortunately, there are comprehensive file recovery tools that can bring back lost and erased files with ease. Because, just by deletion or missing of files doesn’t mean that files will get completely removed from hard drive. It means, the registry entries of those files will be erased and the information of the files still resides on the same memory location until new data gets stored in their places.

Best utility to retrieve encrypted files:

Recommended by data recovery professionals, Yodot File Recovery is the best choice for extracting all types of files from hard drives. Built with superior recovery modules, the software is capable of recovering encrypted files from external hard drive with utmost ease. This tool can perform recovery of files like documents, compressed folders, presentation files, report sheets, basic image and videos files, etc. from internal as well as external hard drives. It supports to work on hard drives formatted with FAT16, FAT32, ExFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 file systems and interfaced with SATA, ATA, PATA, SCSI, etc. Also, the software can be employed to rescue files from USB drives, FireWire drives, memory cards and other storage drives on Windows OS based PCs and laptops like Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Server 2003.

Please Note: To access recovered encrypted files, one has to posses the right password / key. With the absence of password, these encrypted files cannot be accessed using the software. Also, software cannot support to recover files from encrypted hard drive. However, to accomplish this it is suggested to download Yodot Hard Drive Recovery program.

Steps to regain password protected data from external hard drive:

• Connect your external hard drive from which encrypted files are lost
• Download Yodot File Recovery software on a healthy Windows system
• Install and run the utility by following given instructions
• From main screen, click on Deleted File Recovery option if encrypted files are erased



• Else, click on Lost File Recovery option to bring back lost encrypted files
• After clicking next, select the drive from which encrypted files has to be recovered (externally connected hard dive)
• Software then performs a quick scan of selected portable drive to recover all encrypted files
• Retrieved files will get listed under Data view / File Type view



• Now, select required files and mention destination location on host system drive to save the files