Hard Drive Recovery Software - External HDD & USB Hard Drive Recovery Software - External HDD & USB
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Download External Hard Drive Recovery Software

External Hard Drive Recovery Software gets files back from external and USB hard disks that were formatted, turned RAW or started to fail. A weak disk is copied to an image first, and the scan runs on the copy.

   
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Free scan and previewDisk image in 2 passesSMART health of every disk
Hard Drive Recovery Software - External HDD & USB Screenshot.
The SoftOrbits program handles a USB hard drive formatted by mistake, or one that has slowed down and started throwing read errors. It reads each disk's SMART data before scanning. A failing drive is copied once, sector by sector, to an image on a healthy disk; Deep scan works on that copy. The scan, preview and disk image are free in the trial; saving recovered files requires a license.

Scan the disk or scan a copy of it?

A deep scan reads every sector from the first to the last. A healthy disk does not care. A disk with pending sectors may not survive one more full read.

Usual way

Scan the weak disk as it is

  • Each new scan wears the same disk again
  • If the drive dies halfway, the results go with it
VS
Image first

One pass over the disk, then the image does the work

  • Good areas are taken first, weak ones at the end
  • Every later scan uses an .img on another drive
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How to download and use the External Hard Drive Recovery Software

Download it and check the Health column.
1

Download it and check the Health column

Download the external hard drive recovery software and install it. Windows asks for administrator rights. Plug in the external drive and find it in the list. The Health (SMART) column next to Capacity shows Good, Warning, Failing or Not reported.

Create disk image first.
2

Create disk image first

Select the disk and click Create disk image. Save the .img file to another healthy drive with at least as much free space as the disk size, and not FAT32, which stops at 4 GB per file. Pass 1 of 2 reads the healthy areas, Pass 2 of 2 retries the skipped sectors. You can scan a healthy disk directly instead.

Scan the image and recover.
3

Scan the image and recover

Click Scan the image. Quick scan goes first, and if it finds nothing, Deep scan follows. Click a file to preview it, tick the ones you need and press Recover. Save them to a different drive, never back to the failing one.

Formatted by mistake? Leave the drive alone.

Formatted by mistake? Leave the drive alone

A quick format writes a new empty file table. The old photos and documents remain in their sectors until something new lands on top, so put nothing on that disk. When Windows offers to format a RAW drive, say No. This external hard disk recovery software opens the source disk read-only.

   
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Not recognized? Find out where it disappears

Check Disk Management. If the disk appears there as RAW with a drive letter, it still answers commands. The damage is in the file system, and hard drive data recovery software can get at the data. A disk missing from Disk Management and Diskpart is out of reach for any software, this one included.

   
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Not recognized? Find out where it disappears.
Clicking? Call a lab, not a scan.

Clicking? Call a lab, not a scan

A steady tick-tick from the enclosure usually points to the heads, and each new spin-up makes it worse. The program's own warning reads: no software helps with a mechanical failure. Image a quiet disk that just got slow once, then unplug it.

   
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Inside the hard drive data recovery software

Disk image in two passes

Pass 1 copies the disk in 1 MB blocks and skips any bad zone. Pass 2 returns to the skipped part in 32 KB pieces, then sector by sector. A read that hangs is dropped after 3 seconds in the first pass and 10 seconds in the second, so one bad spot cannot hold the copy all night. Sectors that still fail are recorded as unreadable.

SMART in the drive list

For a hard disk the Health column is built from 4 SMART attributes. Reallocated sectors (05) and pending sectors (C5) count the bad spots, uncorrectable errors (C6) count lost data, and power-on hours (09) give the age. Behind a USB enclosure, SMART data arrives only if the bridge supports SAT pass-through. When it does not, the column says Not reported and never shows Good by default.

A warning before the deep scan

When the disk has pending or uncorrectable sectors, or a count that grows while it is plugged in, the scan does not start on its own. A dialog pops up with a warning that this disk is failing, the SMART table with the meaning of each value, and two buttons, Create disk image first and Scan directly.

Pause, stop, continue

A map file (.fdrmap) next to the image keeps track of every copied range. Press Stop and keep the image, shut down the PC, come back tomorrow. The program sees the unfinished image, shows the percent copied and offers to continue from where it stopped. While copying it shows the time left, the current speed in MB/s and the disk temperature.

Scan the copy as often as you like

Open disk image loads any .img made earlier. Run a fast pass, a deep one or a search for one more file type; each run works with the image while the failing disk sits in a drawer. Files that touch unreadable sectors are marked as partly recovered.

Quick scan, Deep scan, signatures

The program rebuilds folders from NTFS and exFAT records. FAT32, FAT16 and FAT12 work too. Deep scan reads the whole disk or image and searches by signature for more than 30 file types in 7 groups.

File types found by signature

While the file table survives, any file type comes back with its name and folder. When the table is gone, Deep scan looks for known file headers, and those finds come back without their original names and folders.

GroupFile typesHow a found file is checked
PhotosJPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, PSDStructure check for all but PSD, which is matched by header
Camera RAWTIFF, ORF (Olympus), RW2 (Panasonic), RAF (Fujifilm)TIFF-based files are read tag by tag; RAF by header
DocumentsPDF, DOC, RTF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, ODTPDF and DOC by structure. Office files and ODT are found as ZIP and sorted by what is inside
ArchivesZIP, RAR, 7Z, GZ, BZ2, XZ, CAB, JARZIP, RAR, 7Z by structure, the rest by header
VideoMP4, AVI, MKV, WMV, FLVMP4 and AVI by structure, the rest by header
AudioMP3, FLAC, OGGBy header
OtherSQLite databases, EXE programsBy structure
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Hard Drive Recovery Software - External HDD & USB
Hard Drive Recovery Software - External HDD & USBDownload it, check the disk health and preview what the scan finds before you buy a license.
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Who needs external hard disk recovery software

Families with one big backup drive

Ten years of photos on a 2 TB USB hard drive with no second copy. When it suddenly asks to be formatted, the free scan shows what is still there before anyone pays.

Photographers with archive disks

Old shoots live on external disks that spin up only twice a year. Those are the first to grow weak sectors, so check the Health column before the next big copy.

Repair shops and IT support

Image a customer's drive once, scan the copy on the bench and give the original back untouched. The SMART table lets you show the customer real numbers.

HDD recovery software: trial and full version

The trial does the same imaging and scanning as the full version and shows everything it finds. Only the Recover button asks for a license.

FeatureTrialFree downloadFull versionWith a license key
SMART health in the drive list✓✓
Disk image in two passes, with pause and resume✓✓
Quick scan and Deep scan of a disk or an image✓✓
Preview of found files✓✓
Saving files with Recover✗✓
Scan first. Buy a license when the files you need open in the preview.
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  Buy now
From $ 9.99
  Buy now
From $ 9.99
  Download 

Scan first. Buy a license when the files you need open in the preview.

Hard Drive Recovery Software - External HDD & USB
Hard Drive Recovery Software - External HDD & USB
Price
from $ 9.99
Version
4.14
File Size
6.7 Mb
Last updated on
28/07/26
Free trial: scan, preview and disk image; saving recovered files requires a license
System Requirements
  • Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7 (32/64 bit)
  • Intel i3, AMD Ryzen 5 or above
  • 4 GB of RAM or above
  • NVIDIA® GeForce® series 8 and 8M, Intel® HD Graphics 2000, Quadro FX 4800, Quadro FX 5600, AMD Radeon™ R600, Mobility Radeon™ HD 4330, Mobility FirePro™ series, Radeon™ R5 M230 or higher graphics card with up-to-date drivers
  • 1280 × 768 screen resolution, 32-bit color
  • 1 GB of free hard disk space or above

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, recovery software for a hard disk works when the corruption is logical and the disk still spins up quietly. A RAW volume or damaged file table leaves the files where they were; only the map to them is broken. If SMART shows trouble, image the disk first and scan the image.

After a quick format, usually yes. A full format in Windows Vista and later writes zeros over the whole volume, and after that a scan finds nothing. If you don't remember which one was used, the free scan and preview will tell you.

Try another USB cable and another port, and plug in the power adapter if the drive has one. Once the drive gets a letter in Windows, image it before anything else. A disk that still does not appear anywhere is out of reach for software.

Not at home. Clicking is a mechanical fault, and the heads can scratch the platters. Don't open the case, freeze it or tap it. A lab replaces the parts in a clean room and then reads the platters.

A disk with weak sectors can fail during the long read of a deep scan. The image takes that read once, so the disk can stay unplugged afterwards. By default it is named after the drive letter and the date, like E-2026-11-03.img.

No. CHKDSK /f and repair tools rewrite NTFS records to make the disk usable, and those records are what the scan needs to find your folders. Recover the files first, then repair or format the disk.

The trial of this external hard disk recovery software is a free download. It makes the disk image, runs both scans and previews the files. A license is needed only to save what it finds.

The program runs on a Windows desktop with administrator rights. Without them, Windows won't let it read the disk as a whole, so the program asks you to start it as administrator and try again.

Before you pay for HDD recovery software, check whether it reads the disk's SMART attributes and warns you when the disk is failing, copies the disk to an .img file and resumes an unfinished copy, and previews the files. This program does all three.

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Rate Hard Drive Recovery Software - External HDD & USB

  • Windows 7
  • Windows 8
  • Windows 10
  • Windows 11
Author: SoftOrbits (English)
4.5
Avg. rating: 4.5 from 870 votes
Good
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