How to Recover Data on Damaged external storages and fix them

A lot of times we face issues with our external storages like hard drives, SD cards and all sorts. Just imagine damaging your external hard drive that contains all your work samples,it feels like loosing a part of your life. Trust me,have been there before and so I felt I should share this with everyone.

When your SD card is damaged or corrupted due to certain reasons, your data will usually become inaccessible. If you tried to open it on your computer, Windows will remind that the card is not accessible because the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.

At this moment, you can try three damaged SD card recovery solutions which are quite hierarchical depending on the complexity of the problem to fix the card and recover lost files.

First is using windows built in tools for simple and early damages, second is using chkdsk for medium or averagely complicated damages and the last for severely complicated damages is third-party data recovery software.

Before starting, there are some important things to note:

ensure to stop using the damaged SD card until you fully get back your data, or you will suffer data recovery failure.
Make sure the hard disk is still physically OK and can be read by a computer system.
Ensure your external storage is not write protected so as to allow access of the card by the computer system,You can shift the small switch on your card reader to achieve this.

USING WINDOWS BUILT IN TOOLS

If your card is physically ok, and the switch (where present) is in the 'write' position, you can try one of Windows' built-in tools to attempt to fix it.

Your options will vary depending on whether your card appears in Windows Explorer or not.

For the storage device appearing in file explorer

right click on the SD card=>choose Properties=>then the Tools tab=> Click on Check

Windows will scan the card for errors and try to fix them.

For the storage device not appearing in Explorer

search the Start menu for Disk Management;

In this tool you can see which drives Windows can acess and the list can include drives which don't have a drive letter.

If you can't identify your SD card in the list of drives, it's either completely dead or the card reader isn't working properly (perhaps due to a problem with drivers).

If the SD card is there, but without a drive letter, you should be able to right click on it and use the available options to give it a drive letter or format it to a file system that Windows can read and can then allocate a letter.

How to Use chkdsk to fix a corrupted SD card without data loss

"chkdsk" command is your best choice for damaged SD card recovery. Requiring no format, it allows you to fix a corrupted SD card without data loss.

I used Windows 7 for this , if it doesn't work for you on another windows version, you can always drop your comments here or contact me and I would help.

Procedures:

1. Plug in your SD card to your computer with a card reader.

2. Go to the start menu, type in "cmd" in a search bar, hit enter and then you can see something named "cmd. exe" under a list of programs.

3. Right click "cmd. exe" and then you will get the following command windows that allow you to fix your corrupted SD card without format.

4. Type in "chkdsk /X /f sd card letter:" or "chkdsk sd card letter: /f ", for example,"chkdsk /X /f G:" or "chkdsk h: /f".

Finishing all the steps, Windows will check and fix the file system of the SD card. It usually takes several minutes, so be patient.

After that, if you see "Windows has made corrections to the file system" in the command window, then congratulations! The damaged SD card is successfully fixed and you can access your data with ease.

If this doesn't work then you should try an efficient third-party data recovery software to fix the damaged SD card and get back your data.

USING DATA RECOVERY SOFTWARES

There are many different applications for this, you can find some by searching on google with the keywords "file recovery free", or try the following:

1) PhotoRec;

2) EaseUs Data Recovery Wizard;

3) card data recovery;

4) Disk digger;

5) ZAR;

6) stellar Phoenix photo recovery

When using such softwares, there are no guarantees you'll get your files back intact, and typically they will lose their original file names which could be an issue for some people and some will be able to rename recovered files with relative ease.

Some free recovery programs are limited on the number of files or amount of data they will recover, so look for any limitations before downloading.

Also beware of additional unwanted programs which might be installed alongside free software: never use the 'Recommended' installation option. Always choose 'Manual' and carefully read each screen, opting out of search bars and other software.

I would be teaching in this tutorial post how to use two third-party Recovery Apps which will be Stellar phoenix Photo Recovery and Zero Assumption Recovery (ZAR)

How to use the Stellar phoenix photo Recovery

Run the ‘Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery and connect the SD card to your system to initiate the recovery of photos/music/videos from SD card.

Next, select 'Recover Photo, Audio, & Video' option from the main interface. The software lists all the connected volumes and external drives.

Select the drive that you want to scan for recovery and click 'Start Now'. Here, you will also get the option of 'Advanced Scan' that allows you to customize the recovery on the basis of file types. The ‘Advanced Scan’ option lets you to select the specific files to scan from the file list such as ‘Photo’, ‘Audio’, or ‘Video’. Additionally, you can also select the data range from the storage media; these options let you to customize the process and minimize the scanning time

After initiating scan you will be able to view the process in the scanning process bar. All the found files will be listed in a hierarchical (tree like) structure format in the left hand side window pane.

Now, you can preview the listed items after clicking on them. Here, you can also select the desired files and click the ‘Recover’ button to initiate recovery.

The next window asks you to select a location to save the recovered multimedia files. Choose a desired location and save the recovered files.

How to use ZAR Recovery App

Another free recovery program is ZAR (Zero Assumption Recovery). Most programs work in a similar fashion, but these instructions will give you an overview of how to use it.

Install ZAR, then insert the damaged SD card into your PC's card reader.

Launch ZAR. (You may have to disable your PC's security software, in which case we recommend you also disable the internet connection).

When prompted, click the Image Recovery (Free) option. This will help you to recover photos from an SD card.

ZAR will now look for devices that are installed, and you need to point it toward the offending SD card. Select the correct disk and click Next.

ZAR will now analyse your SD card. This will take a few minutes. Once this is complete you'll see a list of the recovered files.

On most SD cards the chances are that clicking the 'Root' checkbox will select all the images.

Click Next and you can then select the folder into which recovered files will be placed. By default this will be the same as the folder your chose to save (so 'Root', in all likelihood).

One important point: you will be asked to select a destination folder for the recovered files. Make sure you choose one on your PC's hard disk and not back on to the corrupt SD card as you would only complicate issues with that

It will take a few minutes for the files to copy across, once this is complete browse to the destination folder you selected. You should find most if not all of the files you wanted to rescue.

After recover all your data, you can format the SD card to fix the Damaged SD card error.

I hope this works for you and if it doesn't please drop your comments so I can help you better.

Thanks for visiting the site.

Joswal Tech Hub cares

How to Recover Data on Damaged external storages and fix them