External hard drives have become very popular in the last few years. No wonder as they are portable, really convenient and quite affordable. However, despite being considered absolutely reliable by the majority of the users, they are in fact far from being infallible. The good news is that once lost or deleted (on purpose or by mistake) from an external HDD or SSD, the files are not usually lost forever. In most data loss scenarios, they could be restored (at least partially) with a data recovery program like Recovery Explorer.

With this software you can recover files and folders that have been accidentally deleted or lost as a result of quick format, virus attack or any other logical failure on an external HDD, SSD or SSHD. Recovery Explorer offers two modes to choose from: the Standard (or full-featured) and the Wizard-based (simplified) one. Choose any or first try both and then make your choice.

How to recover data from an external HDD or SSD under the Standard mode

First, download Recovery Explorer to your PC and install it just like you usually install programs.

NOTE: There are several editions of this software so that you can choose one that best suits your needs. In this tutorial we are using Recovery Explorer Standard. Please, also pay attention to the software version as there are 3 of them for different operating systems: Windows, Linux and macOS.

Then connect your hard drive to the computer using its native USB cable (please make sure it works before using it) or just plug it into a USB port, if it has an integrated male-type USB connector (some SSDs have it).

Find your drive in the list of detected storages and select it. If it’s not there, click the Refresh option in the topbar.

Press Start scan. Or you can also start its scanning by clicking on the magnifying glass icon right above the list of storages.

After that, you’ll get to the first step of the scanning procedure configuration. You can leave the settings established by default or change them according to your needs. Hit the Next button.

In the next step, there is a list of file systems to look for. You can select all or uncheck those you don’t need (read more about file systems). Press Next.

In the last step, you need to specify whether the program should perform the so-called raw recovery or recovery by known content (recommendable after a quick format of the drive).

Then press the Start scan button and wait till the scanning of the drive is over.The progress bar shows the time left till its completion.

When the scanning is finished, you’ll get a popup prompting to save the scan result database. Save it or skip this pass. In case you opt for the first variant, please don’t choose the external hard drive you’ve just scanned as target storage for this database as this may result in irreversible data loss.

Look through the recovered files and folders (their names are marked with a different color). Mark those you'd like to copy to another data storage. You can do it by holding the Ctrl key and clicking on the files in the list. As an alternative, hit the Define selection button in the toolbar and tick those you need to save.

After that, click the floppy disk icon in that very toolbar, choose Save (recover) selection and specify a storage you’d like to copy your recovered data to. It can be any internal or external data storage medium except for the one you’ve restored data from. Mind that saving recovered files to that very storage they’ve been retrieved from will cause irreversible data loss.

The free trial version of Recovery Explorer Standard lets you save an unlimited number of small files up to 256 KB each, while with the trial version of Recovery Explorer RAID or Recovery Explorer Professional you can save any number of files up to 768 KB each. If the files you’d like to save are bigger, you should get a license.

How to recover data from an external HDD or SSD under the Wizard mode

Press the corresponding button at the bottom of the program window to activate the Wizard mode.

Select your HDD, SSD or SSHD in the Physical disks panel or, if you need to scan only a particular volume on it, select the necessary one among the Logical volumes. If it’s not there, use the Refresh drives option to make the software update the list of detected data storage devices.

Click Continue and then choose between two scanning variants: a deep one (more time-consuming, recommended after a quick format or in case the storage file system is corrupted) and a quick one (adequate for the majority of data loss cases and allowing you to save your time and system memory).

Wait till the scanning of the drive is finished.

When it’s finished, you’ll find all files grouped into folders by their types: documents, images, video files and so on for a more convenient navigation.

But if you prefer seeing them exactly as they are organized on your hard drive, open the All files folder.

Now tick the file(s) you need to save and press Recover selected.

Then choose a target data storage device different from the one you’ve just scanned and hit Start recovery. Your files will be copied to the specified location.