If you have important information on your crashed hard disk that needs to be restored? Are you unsure of how to recover deleted / lost hard drive data? This article provides you with information you need to learn how to recover files from hard drive. Well, recovering your hard work will require figuring out the best data recovery tool. REMO Data Recovery Software family has easy to use applications that can recover files from unbootable hard drive. The software also supports retrieval of deleted or lost files from non-bootable hard drives and restore data efficiently.

Precautionary steps to be taken in case of a hard drive crash

• Stop working on the disk
• Do not run any repair utility for e.g. “chkdsk ”, as this further may cause permanent data loss
• Do not try and save or reinstall any thing on the crashed hard drive
• Remove the crashed hard drive from the machine and connect it to another healthy system as a secondary drive and run REMO Recover (Windows) Data Recovery Software

To retrieve data from crashed Windows hard disk follow these simple steps with REMO Recover (Windows) Data Recovery Software.

Step 1: Install REMO Recover (Windows) Data Retrieval Software and run the application by double clicking the icon on the desktop or run it from the programs list from the Start menu. This will launch the application main window as shown in Figure a.

Figure a: Program Main Window

Step 2: Select ‘Recover – Advanced’ option to continue (See Figure b).

Figure b: Select Appropriate Option

As you click the ‘NTFS Partition Recovery’ button, a window will be displayed to select the disk from which you wish to retrieve your data (see Figure ‘c’).

Figure c: Select source disk

Step 3: Select a source drive and the processing mode to process the drive. The software provides two processing modes: Display default partitions and Search for lost partitions. By default the processing mode is set to ‘Display default partitions’. As you click ‘Next’ button, the application analyses the drive and lists all the found partitions in the partition table as shown in Figure ‘d’.

Figure d: Partition Table

Step 4: Select a partition for processing and click Finish button. The application processes the partition and displays the found files and folders in a tree structure as shown in Figure ‘e’.

Figure e: Found Files and Folders

Step 5: After scanning process completes a tree of found files and folders is created. You can preview the file before it could be recovered. To preview the file, right click on the file whose preview is to be seen and select Preview option. This will show the preview of the selected file as shown in Figure ‘f’

Figure f: Preview

Note: Other than image files all the other files would be displayed in ASCII form
Step 6: After you find the file you wish to recover, the only task left in recovery process is to restore it to a safe destination location.

If you want to restore whole tree structure formed, click root folder to mark whole data and click on ‘Save All’ option on the tool bar or button from the tools menu. As soon as you click on ‘Save all’ button, a window to select destination location is displayed as shown in Figure ‘g’.

Figure g: Save data

Step 7: Select a logical drive in your local disk where you wish to save the data. Specify the file type you wish to ignore (file filter) while saving process and Click OK. Make sure you do not save data to the same location from which you are recovering it.

You can now access the recovered data as it was never lost before.

If you have lost data from your external hard drive follow these precautionary measures to restore them successfully:

1. Stop using the external hard drive immediately. If you write new data onto the external hard disk, the new data may overwrite the old data, then you can’t retrieve it
2. Connect external hard disk onto another computer as a slave
3. Install REMO Recover (Windows) Data Recovery Software to this another computer, which is healthy system and has the best of hardware components, and then proceed ahead retrieving the data.

Follow this step-by-step guide to recover files from external hard drive with the help of REMO Recover (Windows) Data Recovery Software.

Step 1: Install REMO Recover (Windows) Data Recovery Software and run the application. This will launch the application main window (see Figure a).

Figure a: Program Main Window

Step 2: The main window contains a “Recover – Advanced”. Select ‘Recover – Advanced’ option to continue (See Figure b).

Figure b: Select Appropriate Option

As you click ‘NTFS Partition Recovery’ button, a window will be displayed to select the disk from which you wish to retrieve your data (see Figure ‘c’).

Figure c: Select source disk

Step 3: Select a source drive and the processing mode to process the drive. The software provides two processing modes: Display default partitions and Search for lost partitions. By default the processing mode is set to ‘Display default partitions’. As you click ‘Next’ button, the application analyses the drive and lists all the found partitions in the partition table as shown in Figure ‘d’.

Figure d: Partition Table

Step 4: Select a partition for processing and click Finish button. The application processes the partition and displays the found files and folders in a tree structure as shown in Figure ‘e’.

Figure e: Found Files and Folders

Step 5: After scanning process completes, you can preview the file before it could be recovered. To preview the file, right click on the file whose preview is to be seen and select Preview option. This will show the preview of the selected file as shown in Figure ‘f’

Figure f: Preview

Note: Other than image files all the other files would be displayed in ASCII form
Step 6: After scanning process, the only task left in recovery process is to recover files to a safe destination location..

If you want to restore whole tree structure formed, click root folder to mark whole data and click on ‘Save All’ option on the tool bar or button from the tools menu. As soon as you click on ‘Save all’ button, a window to select destination location is displayed as shown in Figure ‘g’.

Figure g: Save data

Step 7: Select a logical drive in your local disk where you wish to save the data. Specify the file type you wish to ignore (file filter) while saving process and Click OK. Make sure you do not save data to the same location from which you are recovering it.

Note: We recommend that you download the evaluation versions first which will give you first hand experience to try and test before purchasing. Evaluation version gives you a fair idea on chances of the results that the full version might deliver. We suggest that you test, evaluate and get a complete understanding of our product capability using the evaluation / demo version.