Ask me how to recover lost files from WD Elements portable hard drive

Ask me how to recover lost files from WD Elements portable hard drive

Working with large amounts of information? You know the desperate moment when you realize that you need some files that you deleted a long time ago. This is the topic of this post : Recover deleted files which were deleted long time ago. 1st lets start with some general data recovery tips, valid for all type of data devices, PC’s, Mac’s, phones.

Never used a damaged or faulty storage medium more than you have to. It sounds obvious, but, in reality, we as people love to procrastinate on things that are unpleasant to deal with, such as purchasing a new hard drive or SD card when the old one starts showing early signs of failure. However, by postponing the replacement of your storage device, you increase the chance of it failing catastrophically each time you use it. When that happens, there’s often little you can do.

It’s a bit simpler on a Mac, using an intimidating-sounding tool called target disk mode. You connect a nonworking Mac to a working Mac and treat that nonworking Mac like a big USB drive. This can be useful if, for example, you need to get files off a computer with a screen or keyboard that doesn’t work. Connect the two computers with a USB-C, Thunderbolt 2, or Firewire cable. On the broken Mac, turn it on, and press and hold the T key while it starts up. Or, if the Mac is already turned on, go to Apple (on the upper left of the screen) -> System Preferences -> Startup Disk -> Target Disk Mode.

As far as the safety of the data is concerned, take assurance in the fact that the through a hard drive data recovery software, the data can well be recovered once the hard drive has been repaired and made to work again. As compared to a mechanical failure, a logical failure is as soothing as good news. That’s because logical failures mean something’s wrong at the software front.

Data loss can be due to a number of factors, but two are the most common. The first (and easiest to resolve) is software related. You’ve accidentally deleted an important folder and emptied the recycle bin, or gone and formatted the wrong drive by mistake. The second—and probably most common—cause of data loss is a fault with the hard drive itself. Given the complexity of modern drives it’s no wonder that somewhere along the line something will go wrong. When the drive suffers from some form of failure there’s often little that you can do yourself to get the data back—professional data recovery services are usually required. However, there are certain failures that you can attempt to resolve yourself.

If it’s not an internal connection issue, try extracting the whole hard drive from the external enclosure then connect it to your computer as a secondary drive, or better yet, via an IDE/SATA to USB adapter. Your external drive will then mount as usual. If you can see that all your files are intact and readable, then congratulations, disaster has been averted! If your drive is still being recognized by your computer and your problem is more of a software issue like accidental deletion, a reformatted partition or data corruption, the main thing you need to be aware of is that you should stop using that drive immediately! See, if you continue writing files to your external drive, the greater the chance that the space occupied by the “deleted” data will be overwritten, killing your chances of recovering them. Disconnect the external drive in the meantime while you download and install the data recovery software you will need.

DoYourData can help you easily recover deleted, formatted or lost files from WD Elements portable hard drive including WD Elements 500GB, WD Elements 750GB, WD Elements 1TB, WD Elements 1.5TB, WD Elements 2TB etc. DoYourData also can recover lost data from other kind of devices, such as hard drive, USB drive, Memory card, SD card etc. See extra info at Western Digital hard drive data recovery.