How to Recover Photos From External Hard Drive?

Updated on March 06, 2023

Summary: Stunned!! that your photos are lost from the external hard drive? Wondering what happened and want to know how to recover it? Then you have landed on the right article, here we will help you to recover photos from external hard drives with ease. If you are in a hurry and want to speed up your procedure, then you can try using the Yodot Photo Recovery tool.

“I just tried to connect a relatively old external hard drive and I got fateful "click, click, click." This drive had all my photos and music on it from 2006 and before. Is there any way to recover this data or am I screwed?” - Reddit

Above the user has faced the issue, here we explained clearly in this article by covering the possible reasons for the loss of photos from an external hard drive and the best solutions to fix the issue.

What are the Reasons for Losing Photos From an External Hard Drive?

• Malware issues and file system impairment
• Corrupted metadata structure
• Hasty system shutdown while previewing the pictures.
• Unexpected deletion of photos
• Accidentally removing the external hard drive while photos are being transferred to the system
• Errors while re-partitioning external hard drive, file system conversion, bad sectors, hardware faults, etc are other factors that might cause loss of pictures from external HDD
• Formatting partition of external hard drive that contains your images, instead of logical drive on the hard drive when connected to a computer for data access
• Mechanical Loss - As the external hard drive stores data on magnetic platters, accidentally dropping the hard drive leads to damage to its platters, internal parts and that is called mechanical loss and causes loss of photos from the external hard drive. But you can recover them using the Yodot Photo Recovery tool.
• Logical Failure - You can identify the logical failure by connecting the mechanical loss external hard drive to a system, which doesn’t produce any clicking sound and it won’t boot up also. There is some error that is not allowing you to access your external hard drive. But you can recover the data from the logical failure hard drive.

How to Recover Photos from External Hard Drive?

Solution 1: How to Recover Pictures From External Hard Drive by Utilizing Recycle Bin

If you haven’t deleted your photos permanently from the computer, you can recover it with the help of recycle bin. Given the steps to recover your photos from recycle bin.

Step 1: Open Recycle Bin.

Step 2: Search the photo by using the Search Box, and select Restore by right-clicking on it. (Or) click Restore the Selected Items by selecting a photo.

Solution 2: How to Recover Photos From External Hard Drive by Backup & Restore Utility Option

Backup and Restore Utility helps you to recover photos if you have backed up it. If you didn’t back up try this option for finding deleted photos.

Steps to Back Up Files:

Step 1: Go to Settings → Update & Security → Backup and select Plus to add a drive.

Step 2: Select the Target Drive and File History will begin to back up.

Steps to Restore Deleted Photos:

Step 1: Look for Restore Files on the search box and launch it by clicking.

Step 2: Choose the selected items and select Green Buton to restore.

Solution 3: Retrieve Photos Using Recover Command

Use the Recover Command on Command Prompt to recover pictures from the external hard drive. Follow the below steps on how to do the same:

Step 1: Launch Command Prompt → select Run as Administrator → input DiskPart.

Step 2: Give List Disk and Select Disk 0 and followed by List Volume.

Step 3: Later give Select Volume X → Recover [drive:][filename].

For E.g: drive: d, filename: \images\nature.jpg.

Solution 4: How to Retrieve Photos From External Hard Drive Using ‘attrib’ Command:

Use the attrib command to change the attribution of files and to unhide your photos, they may be maliciously hidden by the virus, if the photos are lost due to a malware attack. Follow the steps given below to recover photos from external hard drive:

Step 1: Attach your external hard drive to the system and run Command Prompt and then click Run as Administrator.

Step 2: Give chkdsk F: /f → give Y and give F and press Enter.

Step 3: Finally, input F: >attrib –h –r –s /s /d *.*. So you can fix the issue and unhide your photos.

Solution 5: Recover Pictures From External Hard Drive Using Yodot Photo Recovery Software.

Yodot Photo Recovery is an advanced and robust tool to retrieve photos from an external hard drive. This software is tried and tested under various photo loss scenarios by industry experts. And further, it makes your photo recovery experience easy with its simple user interface and its unique features. Download the tool by using the download button given below.

Follow the Steps Given Below to Recover Photos:

• First of all, connect your external hard drive to the computer from where you want to perform the recovery
• Now download and install Yodot Photo Recovery software onto your system
• Run the software and go as per the messages displayed on the screen
• As soon as you run the software, you can see two options which are “Deleted Photo Recovery” and “Lost Photo Recovery”
• Select the “Deleted Photo Recovery” option from the main screen if you want to recover deleted photos
• Make use of the “Lost Photo Recovery” option in order to get back lost photos
• On the next window, you will see all external and internal drives present in your computer
• Click on the external hard drive from where you want to recover photos
• Now let the software to start scanning of external hard drive and it display all recovered files after the data recovery process
• Preview photos prior to saving and choose the location to save recovered photos

Conclusion:

We have well-researched and listed out all the causes and solutions to recover photos from an external hard drive. Make use of this article effectively to retrieve photos and be worry-free. Help others by sharing this article.

Valuable Tips:

• Do not add anything to the external hard drive after losing photos from it
• Remove the external hard drive only after clicking on the “Eject” option
• Before converting the file system of an external drive make sure that you have its backup
• Keep your antivirus software updated and scan your external hard disk to find and remove viruses from it

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