How to Recover Data from Damaged Hard Disk for Free

How to recover data from damaged hard disk free?

You can recover data from a hard disk or external hard drive with the top-notch EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard. What's more, you can also learn the full guide to fix corrupted hard drives without formatting. 

Have you ever come across the problem of a corrupted hard drive? When a hard drive is corrupted, you can no longer use it, although it does show as a disk. And you may find the following typical symptoms:

• Invalid media type reading drive data.
• Abort, Retry, Fail?
• Windows may ask if you want to format the drive by warning "disk not formatted. Do you want to format now?"
• File names contain "weird" characters.
• "Sector not found" messages.

How to Recover Data from Damaged Hard Disk Free in 3 Steps

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard has a user-friendly interface that allows users to recover files from corrupted and external hard drives without effort. This hard drive recovery software allows you to restore lost data from hard drives in many situations. 

Note: If you cannot boot the computer after the system hard drive is corrupted, you can create a WinPE bootable CD/DVD of EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard to recover the corrupted hard drive.

Step 1. Scan the damaged hard disk

Select the corrupted drive on your hard disk where you lost or deleted files. Click "Scan" and let EaseUS data recovery software scan for all lost data and files on the selected drive.

Step 2. Check the results

When the scan is complete, apply the "Filter" feature or click the "Search files or folders" option to find the lost files on the hard drive.

Step 3. Restore lost hard drive data

Select wanted files that you lost on the drive and click "Recover" to save them to another location.

If you still have difficulty in how to recover data from corrupted hard disk using the free data recovery software, watch this video for help. It provides you with more details on hard drive recovery.

How to Repair the Corrupted Hard Drive Without Formatting

How do you repair the hard disk after restoring lost files from a corrupted hard disk drive? Below are a few tips.

Tip 1. Use a Data Recovery Service to Repair a Corrupted Hard Drive

The first way to fix and repair corrupted hard drives is using the EaseUS data recovery services, of which the experts can help you check and repair the corrupted file system and bad sectors online. 

Tip 2. Fix Corrupted Hard Drive Using CMD

If the hard disk drive has bad sectors or internal errors, the hard disk can corrupt easily. If you know how to run the CHKDSK command on your PC, it will be effortless for you to recover data from a hard disk. Let's see how to run CHKDSK and repair the corrupted hard disk drive now:

• Press Win + X, and select "Command Prompt (Admin)".
• Click "Yes" to launch Command Prompt as Administrator.
• Type chkdsk and hit "Enter" to check errors in the corrupted hard drive.
• Type chkdsk C: /f /r/x to let CHKDSK fix the drive. (C is the drive letter of your corrupted hard drive)

If the target drive is a boot disk, the system will ask you to run the command before the next boot. Type yes and hit "Enter" to restart the computer. The command will run before the operating system loads, allowing it to access the disk and fully repair the corrupted drive.

Tip 3. Run a Disk Check to Fix Corrupted Hard Disk

• Open This PC or Computer, right-click the hard drive, and select "Properties".
• Click "Tools" and click "Check".
• Select "Check local disk" and click "Start".
• Close all running and open programs, and select the option to let the system check upon the next boot.
• After this, restart the PC.

If it reports that your drive has 'bad sectors or clusters', don't worry. CHKDSK command in Tip One will fix this issue.

Tip 4. Repair the Corrupted System Drive from the Control Panel

• Press Win + X, and select "Control Panel".
• Click "System and Security" > tab "Action Center" > expand "Maintenance" and click "Run Scan".
• Click "Restart".

It's Easy to Make a Corrupted Hard Drive Recovery 

After all these steps, you can successfully recover data from a corrupt hard drive and fix the corrupt hard disk issue with useful methods. Now, you can reuse the hard disk drive to store and save data again. If you face a similar problem on your corrupted hard drive, external hard drive, or USB storage devices, don't worry. Just follow this article to get your problem fixed without losing any data.

Corrupted Hard Drive Recovery FAQ

Here are 4 additional questions about how to recover data from a corrupted hard disk. Check here for the answers.

1. How to recover the corrupted hard drive by myself?

• You can repair the corrupted Windows hard drive with an antivirus program. Windows Defender or other third-party solutions can remove the infection and repair your hard drive.
• Use Command Prompt to repair the corrupted Windows hard drive, and then use the CHKDSK command to check and repair the disk.
• Select a file system repair tool to fix the damaged Windows hard drive.

2. Can a corrupted hard drive be recovered?

A damaged hard disk can be recovered with free data recovery software, such as EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard. Install the software on your computer. Start it up and select the damaged hard drive to scan for lost files.

3. How can I recover my corrupted hard drive for free?

Steps to free data recovery from a corrupted hard drive:

• Download and install the EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for free.
• Launch EaseUS data recovery software and choose the faulty hard disk to scan.
• Preview and recover the files from the corrupted hard drive.

4. Can formatting HDD fix a corrupted hard drive?

Yes, that is one option to consider. A full format will completely clean the hard drive, rebuild all its file structures, and scan the disk to ensure everything is in working order. However, this operation results in data loss.