The hard drive is always the main storage device for saving photos, videos, audio, and documents when you are using a Windows laptop. However, it’s possible to lose your important files on the laptop hard drive, due to accident deletion, hard drive formatting, or a virus attack.
It will lead to an uncomfortable situation when you suddenly find your data on the laptop hard drive is gone. Under such a situation, you may wonder how to recover data from your hard drive on a laptop?
Fortunately, some useful methods can help you out! In this article, we will introduce three methods for you. With professional hard drive recovery software, it can help you effectively operate the data recovery process from a laptop hard drive with ease.
Method 1: Recover Data from Laptop Hard Drive via Trash or Recycle Bin
When you have accidentally deleted a file from your laptop’s hard drive using the Delete key, it will be temporarily moved to Recycle Bin (Windows), and you can quickly undo this action by pressing Control + Z immediately after deletion. However, if you have deleted the file for a while, this shortcut will not work.
In this situation, you can still recover your deleted files by opening the Recycle Bin. Browse through and locate your deleted file in Recycle Bin, right-click on it, and choose “Restore” to get your data back to its original location on your laptop’s hard drive.
If you permanently deleted files using the Shift + Delete key combination, emptied the Recycle Bin, or deleted files from an external hard drive, the files will not be in the Recycle Bin.
In such situations, you can use the following CMD to search for backup files or turn to professional hard drive recovery software to scan for and recover your deleted data.
Method 2: Recover Data from Laptop Hard Drive via CMD
Command Prompt, also called CMD, is a command-line interpreter available in Windows and other popular operating systems. You can use Command Prompt to interact with the system using text-based commands. It supports recovering data from a laptop hard drive, flash drive, and SD card easily, and can be used in various scenarios.
When files on your laptop hard drive have been deleted or lost due to accidental deletion, formatting, virus attack, or file system corruption, Command Prompt can give you a favor.
Here are the detailed steps to recover data from a laptop hard drive using CMD:
Step 1: Press Win + X to Open Command Prompt and select “Command Prompt (Admin)” from the menu to operate as Administrator.
Step 2: Use the “cd” command to navigate to your Laptop Hard Drive where the lost data was located. For example, if the data was on the D drive, type “D:” and press Enter.
Step 3: Type the “chkdsk /f” command followed by the drive letter and a colon and press Enter. For example, type “chkdsk /f D:” and press Enter to run the command. This command will check and fix errors on your Laptop Hard Drive.
Step 4: Once the CHKDSK Command completes, recover your data using ATTRIB Command. Type “attrib -h -r -s /s /d *.*” and press Enter. This command will reveal hidden files and folders and start to recover them.
Step 5: Navigate to your Laptop Hard Drive using File Explorer and check if your lost files and folders have been recovered.
Note: Although CMD can help you recover lost data in some cases, it may not be effective in all scenarios, especially if your deleted laptop hard drive data has been overwritten or the laptop hard drive has suffered physical damage. For more advanced and comprehensive data recovery, consider using professional hard drive data recovery software.
Method 3: Recover Data from Laptop Hard Drive via Data Recovery Tool
If you haven’t recovered your lost hard drive data from your laptop after trying the above two methods, you may turn to professional data recovery software like FonePaw Hard Drive Recovery.
It can easily restore your lost files from your laptop hard drive and other commonly used storage devices. What’s more, it provides the features of scanning and previewing all the deleted data on your laptop hard drive for free.
Key Features of FonePaw Hard Drive Recovery Software:
- Recover your precious images, videos, audio, Office documents, and other 30+ types of files from laptop hard drive
- Restore your lost data from the hard drive of almost all brands of laptop, such as Macbook, Samsung, Huawei, Lenovo, Dell, HP, etc.
- Retrieve your lost files due to permanent deletion, accident deletion, hard drive formatting, virus attack, physical damage, water damage, etc.
- Scan and preview your files with file name and the created dates for FREE
- Easy to use with a user-friendly interface, no professional knowledge required
- 100% Privacy protected, your information safety is guaranteed
How to Recover Data from Laptop Hard Drive with FonePaw
Step 1: Choose the file type and your Hard Drive from “Removable Drives” and start scanning.
Step 2: After scanning, browse through the scanned results and choose the files that you want to restore. You can use the filter function to help you find the files from laptop hard drive quickly.
Step 3: You can preview the files according to the file names and the created date. Choose the files you want. Then, click “Restart” to start the recovery process.
Conclusion
It’s important to prevent data loss from laptop hard drive. What’s highly recommended is that you should back up your precious files on the laptop hard drive and use a reliable hard drive with an established brand.
Moreover, keep your laptop hard in a safe place where it will not be damaged physically or by water. You can also use anti-virus programs to check the status of your laptop hard drive.
If the data loss happened to your laptop hard drive unluckily, FonePaw Hard Drive Recovery is always the best choice for you to recover the data from a corrupted hard drive, or even a formatted hard drive.
It’s worth mentioning that you can start the scanning process to check if your data can be recovered in FonePaw software for free. Sooner or later, download FonePaw Hard Drive Recovery and have a try, before everything goes too late!