How to Reformat an External Hard Drive without Losing Your Data

External, Do you store backups of your hard pressure onto an external hard pressure? Hopefully you do. It’s a smart way to maintain your records safe. But what happens if that force turns into corrupted, and you have to reformat it to make it reachable once more? Can you reformat it with out dropping all of your facts? It’s truely feasible, however are you able to do it?

The brief answer is, sure. It is viable to reformat the pressure and maintain your files by means of formatting your drive after which using a data restoration device to repair your facts.

How to reformat a drive

Reformatting a pressure on Windows is a quite sincere process. However, you need to make doubly positive which you complete a Quick format. A Quick layout simplest deletes the organizational shape of the files at the drive, with out disposing of the real documents. Think of it as throwing away a gaggle of file folders however not their contents. You just stack the papers multi functional pile. That’s what Quick File does. It removes the folders and leaves the documents all in one stack.

1. First, connect the external drive to your computer using the USB port. Wait for Windows to recognize your drive.

2. Open File Explorer.

3. Click on “This PC.”

4. Locate your external drive from the list of Devices and Drives.

5. Right-click on the drive.

6. Select “Format” from the list of options. Make sure the Quick Format box is clicked!If it is not ticked, you will lose all of your data. Leave all the other settings the same.

7.Click at the “Format” button, and wait until the procedure has finished.

Once you’ve got completed this system, do no longer write any greater records on your outside force. This new statistics will overwrite the files that were left behind at some point of the reformatting manner. If you shop something new, it will now not just overwrite one file both. It could probably corrupt hundreds of your vintage records.

External, Recover your data

After you have reformatted your power, pass at once to the use of a third-birthday celebration facts recuperation software. While those programs won’t be able to restore one hundred% of your files, the use of them will certainly shop greater than you will have with out trying this method. There are a selection of statistics recovery software options with a purpose to select from, however here are most of the most famous.

1. Recuva

Recuva is popular due to its ability to restore documents from hard drives, DVD or CDs, reminiscence cards, and outside drives. Recuva works by means of searching for unreferenced information, and it’s known for restoring lost directory shape and renaming files with the same call for the duration of statistics recovery.

Recuva is unfastened to download with no facts limits. There is also a pro version that adds automated updates and assist for digital hard drives.

2. Stellar

Because of its green user interface, Stellar Data Recovery is terrific for novices and non-technical customers. It even has a simple wizard wherein you simply tell the program what to search for and in which to search for deleted documents. This software capabilities a “Try Before You Buy” function that eliminates the chance of it not being what you need. The program sells for $ninety nine.

3. Ontrack Easy Recovery

Ontrack EasyRecovery is a powerhouse amongst facts restoration software. It’s high-quality recognized for its power to recover extra files than its competition, however the person interface is much less intuitive than different applications. It has a $79 annual license and not using a limits on the variety of instances you may use it.

4. External, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard

A nice capabilities of EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard is the acquainted consumer interface, that’s based like Windows Explorer. Those who are not as tech-savvy may also discover the interface greater relaxed to apply than other software program. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard is free, however it will handiest recover a total of 500 MB of data earlier than you need to improve to the Pro version for $sixty nine.Ninety nine (Unless you need to proportion approximately the product on social media. Then you could dissipate to 2GB.)

External, How to avoid this whole problem

If you don’t need to fear approximately dropping all of your facts on the chance your outside tough pressure becomes corrupted, you ought to preserve more than one backups of the facts in unique places. For example, preserve a backup in your nearby gadgets, and store backup copies with a cloud storage company as properly. The more backups, the less you want to fear.