Data Recovery

How to Recover Hidden Files from External Hard Drive? Complete Guide

Overview: As we are all aware of gadgets like pen drive, SD cards, external hard drives, 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 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 find hidden folder in external hard disk without any data loss.

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 show hidden files on external hard drive in Windows 10, 8, 7 and 11.

Reasons Behind Hidden Files from External Hard Drive

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

1. When your files get corrupt or damaged.
2. When your system is unprotected and a virus attacks,.
3. When a user hides their data manually and forget.
4. Due to System miss operation,.

There are many other reasons why your file gets damaged or hidden. The good thing is that you have the below solution to show or recover hidden data from external hard disk.

Recover Hidden Files from External Hard Drive Using CMD

Using CMD you can find hidden folder in external hard disk 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 the Windows icon + R from your keyboard, and the Run window pops 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.)

• 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 that all hidden files have been restored again.

Show Hidden Files on External Hard Drive Windows 10 with Windows Explorer

We have already discussed how a virus-infected hard drive may hide your file or have a tendency to lose data. To recover hidden files, users need to install anti-virus software on 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 show hidden files on external hard drive in Windows 10.

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

1. Click the Start button, search for Control Panel and open it.
2. Click File Explorer Options.
3. Next, click on the View tab and click on Hidden files and folders.
4. Select the Show hidden files, folders, and drives option and uncheck Hide protected operating system files.

• Finally, click “Apply” and “OK“.
• Open File Explorer, navigate to your external hard drive, and check if the files are visible.

Attention! Though there is a manual solution we described, there is a chance that users will face problem in some files, Files with a heavy resolution or large size are difficult to recover manually. There, you need to use software which retrieves files without any data loss.

Method 3: Using CHKDSK to Fix External Hard Disk File System Errors

If attrib command isn’t working , you can take the corrupted file system into consideration.

1. 1. To examine the file system, you can run CHKDSK.
   2. Open File Explorer > Right-click your external hard drive > Tap Properties > Tools > Check.

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.

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.

Conclusion

I have assumed that recover hidden files from external hard drive is the most uncommon question That is why I chose this topic and tried to give you all possible solution regarding this problem. I hope this may probably show hidden files on external hard drive in Windows 10. If you find any difficulty in this, then do not hesitate to use software. This is an effective and valuable tool for you.

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