The main motive behind using an external hard drive is to maintain a backup of important data such as pictures, documents, videos, and any other data connecting to PC via any Fire Wire or a USB port. Nowadays, it has become one of the convenient ways to store crucial data. But what happens if the external hard drive gets corrupted or starts displaying some of the hard drive not formatted error means to format the hard drive before using it. However, it contains lots of important data in it, which anybody cannot afford to lose. Therefore, it becomes a bit uneasy for the users to format it. In addition, this error is not only encountered on an external hard drive but on various other devices also like the hard drive of a computer, memory stick, USB flash drive, floppy disk, pen drive, etc. Hence, users are continuously querying about how to recover data from external hard drive without formatting them.

Users Query How to Recover Data from Hard Drive

“I am using Eaget external hard drive on my Windows 10. There are total four partitions in it and till yesterday all of them were working properly. But, I do not know what exactly happened that all partitions are inaccessible and display an error message stating “You need to format this partition first to use it”. It contains lots of important files such as PDFs, Word files, photos, videos on the drive. Now, I just want to know how to recover data from external hard drive without formatting it.”

Why External Hard Drive Always Ask to Format It?

Whenever an external hard drive asks to format the external hard drive, it might create some issue also. Some of the possible reason behind you need to format external hard disk error:

  • A user has unplugged the external hard drive improperly or not a safe remove.
  • There might be some of virus or malware attack on the external hard drive due to which some folders may become hidden or drive become inaccessible.
  • The number of bad sectors in an external hard drive increases.
  • Another possible reason is Hard Disk Drive suffers from some sort of interruption to while transferring files.
  • A user has deleted some of the system files accidentally and make external hard drive unreadable.
  • Corruption in file table can also damage the external hard drive.

Whenever a user encounters disk not formatted error, then formatting the external hard drive is not at all a reliable approach. After formatting, a user will lose permanent access to his/her data. So in the below section, you will find trusted solution to recover data from external/internal hard drive without formatting it.

Ways to Recover Data from External Hard Drive Without Formatting

Now, to recover files from external Hard Drive without formatting, a user can try both the manual and professional solution. Here, in this section of the post, we have discussed both of them.

Method#1: Recover Lost Files Using Trusted Tool

If any of the above-discussed method not able to recover files from a hard drive without formatting, then a user must switch to some commercial software. There is a number of application online that let users overcome this issue. But choosing the right and trusted software is the most difficult task. Therefore, to make it easy for the users, here we have discussed a perfect solution without any risk. SysTools Hard Drive Data Recovery software is one such application that let users recover files from external hard drive without formatting it. The application supports a recovery of permanently deleted data from any hard drive. Moreover, a user can use this application on any version of Microsoft Windows OS. Perform just four step and recover lost files and folders from external hard drive.

Steps to Recover Data Without Formatting Hard Drive

Here I am listing the four simple steps to recover data from external or internal hard drive without formatting.

  1. Download and Install Software on your Machine
  2. Select hard drive partition and hit on Scan recover data from hard disk
  3. Preview Entire recovered data in preview panel without formatting hard drive
  4. At the last Save required files and folders recover data

Method #2: Fix Need to Format Hard Drive Error by Using Anti-virus

  1. Use some trusted and reliable anti-virus application to locate and resolve all possible viruses on an external hard drive
  2. Try to restart the computer and look it might open external hard drive
  3. Try to connect it with another OS or USB port to open and read the files

Method #3: Recover Data from Hard Drive Without Formatting Via CHKDSK

Another possible way to extract data from a damaged external hard drive is with the help of CMD. To do the same, follow the steps mentioned below and recover files from hard drive without formatting.

  1. First of all, you need to type cmd in the search box. Then, right-click and choose Run as administrator option
  2. After that, simply type the given below command in the command prompt and press Enter key to execute it:
    chkdsk F: /f/x/r
    Here:
    /f: It is used to resolve any error that it finds
    /x: It basically ask drive to dismount before the scan process begin.
    /r: It is used to find out the bad sectors on the drive and recover all readable data.
  3. Then, just wait until the process is finished.

Note: - Be conscious while recovering data from external or internal hard drive by chkdsk command. Because, a small mistake can cause you permanent data loss. To avoid such kind of hurdles, you can opt the first method and easily recover data from hard drive without formatting.

Conclusion

It hardly matters what kind of storage device a user is using, it can easily run into a problem. At that time, users will look for a solution for how to recover data from the external hard drive without formatting. Considering such type of requirement in mind both manual and professional solution for the same are covered in this blog. A user can easily select between them based on their requirement and recover all files from hard drive.