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How to Recover Hidden Files from External Hard Drive?

  author
Published By Mohit Jha
Nimisha Ramesh
Approved By Nimisha Ramesh
Published On September 12th, 2023
Reading Time 6 Minutes Reading

hidden external hard drive recovery

Overview: As we are all aware of gadgets like pen drive, SD cards, external hard drive, etc. To keep our sensitive data safe, we create multiple backups using this. Sometimes, your data is not missing and gets hidden on an external hard drive. Trying it and being unable to recover hidden files from an external hard drive may make you anxious. In this article, we are going to discuss all the scenarios that will give you a possible way to recover hidden files from external hard drive without any data loss.

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User Query:

“A few days ago, a very odd thing happened to me. When I used my External hard drive in my system, I was unable to find my files as they were gone, but when I checked my drive space, it was taking some amount of memory. I realized my data had been damaged or hidden. Can anyone help me with this issue?'”

The above situation shows the user is facing the hidden file problem; it is not a big issue, so don’t worry about it. This issue is due to a virus-infected hard drive or missing operations in settings. here we are going to discuss a few operations to recover hidden files from an external hard drive.

Reasons Behind Hidden Files from External Hard Drive

There are a lot of reasons behind hidden files, few of them are following as below:

  • When your files get corrupt or damaged.
  • When your system is unprotected and virus attack.
  • When a user hides their data manually and forget.
  • Due to System miss operation.

There was much more reason by which your file gets damaged or hidden. Good thing is that you have the below solution to recover hidden files from an external hard drive.

Recover Hidden Files from External Hard Drive Using CMD

Using CMD you can recover deleted files from external hard drive without any data loss.
A step-by-step process is shown below:

  • Click on the Window Start button from your taskbar and type “CMD” in it.
  • Press Enter
  • Otherwise press Window icon + R from your keyboard, Run window pop-up
  • Type “cmd” and press enter button, Your cmd screen will open
  • Type: “attrib -s -h -r c:/*.* /s/d”. (C: is a drive, type your own drive letter) Show hidden file
  • Now, Press enter to execute the command

This command will take time to execute. Wait for a while and close the cmd. Now, open the external hard drive and see your all hidden files have been restored again.

Retrieve Hidden Files from Virus Infected Hard Drive

We have already discussed the virus-infected hard drive may hide your file or have a tendency to lose data. To recover hidden file users need to install anti-virus in their system. A command prompt is used in this case to show the data. If you don’t have any trusted anti-virus software, buy them and then follow the steps to recover hidden files.

Install the anti-virus software and then scan your entire system including external hard drive.

  • Go the window start and type control panel and press enter.
  • Click on Appearance and Personalisation Option after then click on File Explorer Option.
  • Select the View tab and then press Show hidden file, folder, and drives.

Show hidden file

  • Uncheck the Hide protected operating system files in it.
  • Click on Apply

After completing this go to the cmd and follow the same steps we discussed above. Wait for a while to execute the command. Close the cmd window and open the external hard drive, your files are visible now.

Attention! Though there is a manual solution we described there is a chance user face problem in some files, files having a heavy resolution or big size file is difficult to recover manually. There you need to use software which retrieves files without any data loss.

Expert Solution to Recover Hidden Files from External Hard Drive

FreeViewer Windows Data Recovery Tool allow users to recover important data from the hard drive of any Windows system. This program can recover all your data, such as photos, videos, documents, music, emails, and all other multimedia files.

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This tool supports data recovery from Windows operating systems (NTFS, FAT32, FAT16, Extended FAT file system, and Mac OS file system (HFS+)), so data that is normally deleted from files such as NTFS, FAT, etc., can be restored very easily.

Complete Guide to Show Hidden Files on External Hard Drive

5 simple steps that you need to go through to recover hidden files from an external hard drive.

1:- Install the software and Run.

2:- Select the particular partition you want to recover and click on the Scan button.

Scan Options

3:– Know your all hidden files will be shown on the screen.

4:- Select the folder you want to recover and press the Save button.

Save file

5:- Your file gets recovered and saves on its original location.

Conclusion

I have assumed that recover hidden files from external hard drive is the most uncommon question that is why I choose this topic and tried to give you all possible solution regarding this problem. I hope this may probably recover all your data from an external hard drive. If you find any difficulty in this then do not hesitate to use software. This is an effective and worth-full tool for you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How do I show hidden files on my external hard drive windows 10

In the above-mentioned blog we have discussed manual methods as well as an automated solution to show hidden files on external hard drive Windows 11, 10, 8. You can select anyone who is more suitable for you.

Q: Can I Recover Hidden Files from An External Hard Drive using CMD?

Yes, you can recover hidden files from an external hard drive using CMD. by following these steps.

1. Press Window R button after that type “CMD” in it. Then, press Enter
2. Type: “attrib -s -h -r c:/. /s/d”. (C: is a drive, type your own drive letter)
But, Remember one thing manual method is a little bit complicated

Q: Is it possible to recover 64 GB data from an external hard drive?

By using the above mentioned software users can recover unlimited data from an external hard drive.