How To Recover Data From Western Digital External Hard Drive?

External hard drives have become increasingly popular among PC or laptop users for their large storage capacity, reliability, efficiency, and cost. Among the many brands, Western Digital (WD) is one of the leading in the industry. It may be your go-to hard drive but your data is not completely safe and there may be instances when you face data loss issues even on WD drives. In this article, you will learn how to recover data from WD hard drives under all circumstances of data loss and also some great tips on avoiding such problems in the future.

Table of Contents

• Possible Reasons Behind Data Loss On WD Hard Drive
• Can You Recover WD Hard Drive?
• How to Recover WD External Hard Drive?
• Method 1: By Using a Professional Hard Drive Recovery Software
• Method 2: Use Window File Recovery to Recover WD Hard Disk
• Method 3: Recover Data From Western Digital External Hard Drive Using Backup
• How To Keep WD Hard Drives Safe?
• Conclusion

Possible Reasons Behind Data Loss On WD Hard Drive

1. Western Digital hard drive damage/failure: Hard drive failure is very common and it can happen on any hard drive so if you are unable to access your hard drive or if it is not working then most probably your western digital hard drive is failed or damaged.


2. Human error: Deleting files and formatting the WD external hard drive unintentionally or mistakenly can cause data loss.


3. Malicious virus attacks and malware infection: Viruses or malware can crash your computer or steal information causing you to lose all your valuable data from your Western Digital hard disk.


4. Power Outages and improper shutdown: Power outage or improper system shutdown during file transfer can lead to data loss.


5. System Crash: Your WD Elements hard drive may get Corrupted due to a system crash.

Can You Recover WD Hard Drive?

User Query: “I have a western digital external hard drive that was unplugged incorrectly. Now, I am not able to access my files because of a careless mistake. I lost over 1,000 photos from my WD hard disk and need to find a way to recover them. Any help regarding how to recover data from WD external hard drive would be really appreciated, Thanks."

Yes, you can recover data from your Western Digital hard drive. When you format or delete a hard drive, the operating system can't reference the data that was on the disk anymore. But, if the specific drive sectors are not overwritten, you can easily recover data from a hard drive. Therefore, retrieving lost files from WD hard disk is possible as long as your data is not overwritten.

Note: Stop using your hard drive once you lost your data from your WD hard drive to avoid overwriting of data and try recovering your lost data as soon as possible. Moreover, you can refer to this article to recover data from Western Digital My Book Live.

How to Recover Western Digital External Hard Drive?

In the below section of this article, we covered 3 different methods which will help you to recover data from WD hard drive. Keep reading.

Method 1: By Using a Professional Hard Drive Recovery Software

To recover data from a WD external hard drive make use of a professional data recovery tool like Remo Recover Software. Remo Recover is an award-winning hard drive recovery tool that can easily detect and recover more than 500 file formats from hard drives under various data loss situations. Moreover, this advanced tool comes with various features like Dynamic recovery view, Free Preview, Filter, and many more to help users perform hassle-free data recovery from hard drives.

Download this tool for free now!!

Steps To Recover Data From WD External Hard Drive

Step 1: Download and install the Remo Recover tool on your computer.

Step 2: Connect the WD external hard drive to the computer using a suitable card reader.

Step 3: Now, Select the western digital hard drive from the home menu and click on the Scan button.

Note: If you are unable to find your WD hard drive, click on the Can’t Find Drive? option.

Step 4: Once the scan starts you can click on the Dynamic Recovery View to recover files from WD external hard drive during the scanning process itself.

Step 5: After the scanning process, you can see your lost data under the Lost and Found folder or Lost Partition folder.

Step 6: Moreover, you can use the Preview feature of this tool to preview the recovered files from your WD hard disk for free.

Step 7: If you are satisfied with the recovery results select the files you want to restore and click on the Recover button.

Step 8: Now select a location of your choice where you want to save your recovered files and save them by clicking on the Save button.

Method 2: Use Window File Recovery to Recover WD Hard Disk

Windows File Recovery is a command-line software utility from Microsoft to recover deleted files. It is freely available for Windows 10 version 2004 and later from the Microsoft Store.

Follow the below steps to start the recovery process from your WD external hard disk using Windows File Recovery:

• Open the Microsoft Store, search and install Window File Recovery.
• Now, Launch the Windows File Recovery, and use the syntax indicated below to start the process of recovering deleted files.
• Use the basic command line that is: winfr source-drive: destination-drive: [/switches].

For example winfr C: D: /n \Users\Documents\test.Docx

• Next, follow the on-screen instructions to recover data from the Western Digital hard drive.

Method 3: Recover Data From Western Digital External Hard Drive Using Backup

Follow the below steps to restore your files from file history backup on a Windows computer:

Step 1: Open the search box and type file history. Now, you will see the Restore your files with File History option select it.

Step 2: Click the left arrow or right arrow to find the latest file version and select the files you want to restore.

Step 3: Click the Green restore button to restore the selected files. If you want to restore your files to a different location, you can click the Settings icon -> the Restore to option to select a new path.

Note: File History Backup won’t help you to recover your data from your WD hard drive unless you’ve activated it in the past. That is why it is highly recommended to use Remo Recover to perform 100% data recovery from WD hard drives.

How To Keep WD Hard Drives Safe?

• Use a good anti-virus program to scan your WD hard drive regularly and keep it free from any kind of virus/malware.
• Make use of “Safely Remove Hardware” before removing the WD hard drive from the computer.
• Always use trusted third-party applications for creating partitions on the Western Digital hard drive.
• Avoid using your WD hard drive after a data loss situation to avoid overwriting files and increase the success rate of WD data recovery.
• For best results, the recovered files should be saved in a location different from where it was recovered. Ideally, it is best to save the recovered files on a different drive.

Conclusion

We hope this article helped you to recover data from your WD external hard drive, In case you have any queries regarding this article please make use of the comment section below we will love to assist you.