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Data is one of the backbones of a computer, and it’s literally obvious from its definition. Your files, documents, and applications being the visible data on your computer define the importance of your computer. Irrespective of what you use your computer or laptop for, there will always be files you don’t want to lose. In fact, a computer is just a machine without data. (importance of data). These data are stored in different places including the hard drive, SSD, flash drives, and you can retrieve them when lost.

Storage Devices and Data Loss

Storage devices and platforms are vulnerable to damage or attacks, which can therefore result in data loss and file corruption. Damages like liquid spillage, or broken storage facilities and attacks like viruses or malware attack can both result in loss of data. Lost or corruption of your files and computer data could be very annoying but don’t be annoyed just yet. With data recovery or retrievals, you could transfer your files to another facility or remove corrupted files whichever the case might be.

How to Retrieve Data from External Drives in 2023

Depending on how fatal the damage to your storage facility or files is, you could either troubleshoot this event or get yourself a good data recovery technician near you. In case of troubleshooting or DIY, let’s have a professional dive in on what leads to data loss or hardware damage. Also how you can retrieve your data from external drives, and how to prevent data loss in the future.

Major Causes of Data Loss in Computers and PCs

User causes

There are some times people mistakenly delete their important files, of course, this isn’t intentional, but a mistake. Data loss may occur as a result of file overwriting, formatting, or accidental deletion. You could simply try to copy a large number of files sometimes when you press Ctrl + A to highlight, then go ahead to click on delete instead of copy. Another way you could lose data is due to carelessness, maybe when your system got broken, which then affects your hard drive. However, this is a minimal issue and recovery won’t take long, human or user errors don’t cause fatal damages.

Natural or Artificial disaster

The hardware components may become damaged as a result of natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, or fires. Theft, loss, or hardware failure are all examples of artificial disasters. When a computer or PC is stolen or lost, data loss may occur if the device includes crucial information that has not been backed up.

See also: Data Recovery Services in 2023

Data loss may occur due to hardware issues with the hard disk or any other component. There are many other causes for this, including overheating, electrical surges, mechanical failure, and power outages.

Malware or Virus

Data theft by malicious viruses, including the disclosure of sensitive or private information, is on the rise. If the ransom is not paid, the data may occasionally not be disclosed. Your files and documents may suffer significant damage as a result of purchasing this software.

On the other hand, viruses are a type of malware that, at first, slows down your computer’s performance and, at its worst, may cause it to crash. Your files are corrupted, overwritten by malware, and reduced to zero kilobytes with a question mark. As a preventative measure, you can run a thorough diagnosis of your computer on a regular basis using an updated anti-virus tool.

Related: 8 common types of Malware and how to mitigate them

Software corruption

Another significant factor in data loss is software failure or crash. Data loss may occur as a result of software, operating system, or application file corruption. This may occur as a result of software faults, malware attacks, or crashes. Any program that is used to request data has the potential to crash, causing data loss or corruption. When updating several files, file editing software can potentially malfunction, causing some files to fail to save or update and end up being erased.

Power Failure

Data loss can occur due to power outages in a number of ways. Any unsaved data in the RAM (Random Access Memory) is lost when a computer or PC shuts down abruptly due to a power loss or power failure. Since RAM is a volatile memory, the information contained inside must be kept there by a continuous flow of electricity.

The read/write heads of the hard drive may crash or the platters on which the data is stored may become damaged due to power surges or a sudden loss of power. Hard disk damage and permanent data loss may come from this.

Retrieving Data from External Drives 

When your computer got damaged or crashes due to any of the reasons listed above, your storage drives as the HDD gets damaged, and you would have to remove the hard drive. The removed hard drive would be put in a designed case for hard drives. Putting them, in this case, will enable them to be connected to another PC via USB ports.

Related: Types of Data Recovery Services

If a virus affects your files, you can get a good anti-virus scanner. This is to scan and delete affected files, and after they get deleted. You can then transfer the none affected files to another computer. You might need to reinstall your operating system if the virus corrupted files or damaged your operating system. Before doing this, make sure you have a backup of your crucial files because doing so will destroy all the data on your hard drive.

See also: 7 best Virus scanners in 2023

Steps to recover your files from External drives

If you lost files completely on your computer, you can download a free or paid recovery software. This will help you screen recently lost files. However if your storage device is made to an external drive and you want to transfer to a new computer. Use the following steps.

  • Put the USB disk in a USB port if one is available. Use a USB connection to link the device to your computer if it’s an external hard disk.
  • You can either click the File Explorer icon on your desktop or enter “File Explorer” in the Start menu search bar.
  • You should see a list of drives on your computer. This includes the external drive, in the left pane of File Explorer. To access the drive, click on it.
  • By right-clicking on the files or folders you want to retrieve, you can retrieve them. From the context menu, select “Copy,” then paste the data where you want it to be saved.

The time taken for data transfer depends on the size of the data retrieved and the speed of your computer. You ought to be able to access the duplicated data on your computer after it has been copied.


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