How to Recover Corrupted Files to

Minimize Losses We’re pretty much sure that most of the people nowadays depend a lot on portable

storage devices like USB flash drive and memory card. They use the portable devices

within a short interval in every single day. We all know that people are used to saving

phone number of friends and families as contacts in mobile phones for convenience sake.

By the same token, they choose to store important business documents, confidential files

and precious photos to an external drive, instead of keeping them in mind or writing them

down on notebook.

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Convenient as it is, to store significant data in digital products risks. And the degree of risk

varies from person to person and device to device. For example, if you are very good at

managing data in portable electronic products and know very clear about how to recover

corrupted files timely after drive corruption, you run a small risk of losing needed files.

However, if you just save files to external drive in an inappropriate way or without good

management, you are very likely to push yourself to jeopardy. And no matter how regretful

you are, you can never have a second chance to make all things right.

What Is File Corruption The real meaning of file corruption refers to file errors (file can’t be opened or messy

codes show up after opening). They bring unexpected changes to the content of original

file and they often occur when we are in the middle of writing, transmitting or processing

file. But what we really mean here by saying “how to recover corrupted files” is drive

corruption and the file loss it brings.

As for the cause of drive corruption, it is too many. We’ll take memory card for example

here to show the possible causes in detail.

Why You Need to Recover Corrupted Files The following factors can lead to external (or internal) drive corruption and much attention

should be paid to them.

1.Human errors: if you connect or disconnect the memory card to computer in the wrong

way, you tend to be put in the situation where memory card can’t be recognized by

computer and important files are inaccessible. There is also the possibility of people

formatting the memory card by mistake. In both cases, file recovery from corrupted drive

needs to be performed immediately.

2.Virus infection: this is almost unavoidable since you exchange data from computer to

memory card or vice versa frequently. Sometimes, even if you don’t transfer data, you can

make the memory card infected: you open a virus file in computer with memory card

connected and it will be invaded by virus.

3.Software conflict: if the programs you installed on the memory card are not compatible

with some computer programs, the OS will resist accessing it. And in this way, you are not

allowed to enter the memory card to see any files in it through using that computer.

4.Physical damage: you tried connecting your memory card to different computers

through different ways and still found it is inaccessible. What happened? Under this

circumstance, you should suspect the existence of physical damage to your memory card.

Its circuit board may be burned due to large instantaneous current. On this occasion, you

must forget about file recovery from corrupted drive. It just can’t be done no matter how

hard you try. Meanwhile, if your memory card has been broken into pieces, you are

provided with no way to recover corrupted files.

Those are common factors that may be blamed for file corruption. Of course, many other

causes exist together with the commonly seen ones.

What You Should Notice According to what we said before, we can divide the cause for drive corruptions into two

categories: soft failure and hardware failure. Obviously, cause 1 to cause 3 belong to soft

failure while cause 4 is hardware failure.

Users can know it easily – files lost due to soft failure may be recovered, while those

missing because of physical damage are gone forever – from what we said in above

content. Nevertheless, though files are able to be recovered from corrupted drive

sometimes, we still should try our best to avoid file loss accidents. Here are things you

need to do for avoiding file loss, by which you can minimize the possible losses.

1.Reduce (it’s best to avoid) operational errors caused by us. We have to plug in or plug

out external storage medium to computer in the correct way. And we can’t be more careful

when managing data in it. To be honest, serious damages can even be resulted from a

tiny operational mistake.

2.Security is always the first priority no matter what we are doing. If we ate, food safety is

the most important thing; if we worked, a safe working environment must be guaranteed; if

we lived in someplace, the quality of house is what we pay most attention to, and then

comes the practicability and aesthetics. Of the same reason, data security is the most

important thing when data are involved. Therefore, when connecting portable device with

vital data to computer, we have to make sure the computer and files in it are all virus-free.

If we need to download something from the internet, we also must check its safety.

3.Software conflict is almost unavoidable since we are not the software designer and don’t

have a correct understanding of its compatibility. When a computer is installed with more

and more programs and software, the possibility of software conflict is rising. The only

measure to improve this situation may be trying to only keep the programs and software

we really need in computer.

4.All of the portable device users are strongly advised to place their device properly in an

appropriate environment to prolong the service life and prevent unnecessary physical

damage. For instance, the device should be placed in the position with a moderate

humidity and temperature. And this place should be waterproof and dustproof and it can’t

be exposed to sunshine directly.

All in all, users have to think twice before performing operations to external storage

medium and always put data security in the most important position.

How to Recover Corrupted Files As we said, drive is commonly corrupted due to two kinds of reasons: hardware failures

and soft failures. So we must recover corrupted files in different ways. It is worth noting

that files lost due to hardware failures may be recovered, but the odds depends a lot on

the damage degree and damage part. What causes the drive corruption and how to fix

that?

Dust and water on the surface of a drive can interrupt the normal recognition of it.

Thus, even if the external drive is connected to computer correctly, users still are not

able to access it or any data in it. In this case, users should disconnect the drive and

clean the surface with special cleaning tools. After that, try connecting the drive to

computer again (or users can connect the drive to other computers with good

condition).

Scratches are also a main reason for stopping the external device being read by

computer. On this occasion, if the scratches are not so serious, users can try to fix them

with brush or soft cloth.

There is one condition in which data recovery can never be carried out: the drive

has been broken into pieces. So in this case, users can forget about the data recovery

and they have to try to minimize the losses through other ways.

If it is the soft faults that cause file corruption, then, congratulations, there’s a large

possibility for successful file recovery from corrupted drive. Our advice in this case is to

look for powerful but free corrupted data recovery software. And after a series of

researches, we find MiniTool Power Data Recovery is a good choice.

Why Choose MiniTool Power Data Recovery According to users’ feedbacks, MiniTool Power Data Recovery owns easy and convenient

operation, high recovery rate as well as wide using range. They admit that this free

corrupted data recovery software is really the best tool they’ve ever used.

We find the comprehensive functional modules of MiniTool Power Data Recovery have

helped a large number of users get back corrupted files safely and many of them have

avoided huge economic losses by using that software. Since it sounds so fabulous, we’d

like to show you the using skills.

How to Do to Finish File Recovery from Corrupted Drive In the very first beginning, users should figure out the specific usage of each functional

module.

“Undelete Recovery” – used to recover accidentally deleted files and folders.

“Damaged Partition Recovery” – suitable for users to get back needed data from

corrupted, damaged and attacked drive.

“Lost Partition Recovery” – available when users need to restore data from the partition(s),

which is (are) missing from hard drive.

“Digital Media Recovery” – specially designed for the recovery of multimedia data, such as

music, photo, picture, video, and so on.

“CD/DVD Recovery” – it’s useful in restoring files from a CD or DVD conveniently.

In addition, every module provides a “Previous Recovery Result” function for users to load

the last scanning result conveniently. (It can be used to open result list quickly if users go

back to the main interface after scanning by pressing the wrong button.)

Obviously, “Damaged Partition Recovery” is the most suitable module users are supposed

to employ in this free corrupted data recovery software in order to recover corrupted files.

Here are the steps to recover files from corrupted drive.

Step one: obtain MiniTool Power Data Recovery from its download page and install it to

computer safely.

Notice: users are forbidden to install the software to the drive which includes corrupted

files for this may bring irreversible damage to corrupted files, so that they can never be

recovered no matter how hard we try.

Step two: run the free corrupted data recovery software to enter its main window shown as

follows:

Then, as the instruction, “Choose a module to start recovery”, shows, users need to click

“Damaged Partition Recovery” in this interface to start file recovery from corrupted drive.

Step two: in this window, we can see all partitions and disks in computer; meanwhile, the

portable drive connected to it is also shown here. Now, users should choose the drive with

corrupted files (since the way to recover corrupted files from external drive is the same to

that of recovering corrupted files from a damaged partition, so we take the latter for an

example here). After that, perform a full scan to the chosen drive by pressing “Full Scan”

button.

Step three: at the end of full scan, all possible partitions will be listed in above interface.

And at this time, users are supposed to select the one with a highest “Suggested” value

and then click “Show Files” to enter and search for needed files.

Step four: in the end, users will see all files founded in corrupted drive by MiniTool Power

Data Recovery. What they need to do now is to check all desired files in the right side and

then save them to a safe location. Just by clicking “Save Files” and clicking “Browse…” in

the pop-up interface, users will be allowed to confirm the place they want recovered files

to be. Then, click “OK” to continue.

When all those operations are completed, users can exit the free corrupted data recovery

software and end the work to recover corrupted files.

There are some important things that all users should notice:

MiniTool Power Data Recovery is only suitable for Windows users. If you are a

Mac user, please get Mac Data Recovery instead.

The free edition of MiniTool Power Data Recovery can only support the recovery

of 1GB of data. For getting back files more than 1GB, you need a paid edition. Choose

the most appropriate one here.

Please backup all your data in the drive you plan to recover files from. Though the

recommended software does well in data protection, various accidents could happen all

out of a sudden.

Finally, hope you can solve the current problem without any trouble. Best wishes!