I find that PC Inspector File Recovery (freeware) is the simplest. You just (reportedly) can’t or shouldn’t run it from the drive you’re diagnosing, ie; the drive
you want to recover files from. You can install PCI on your EHD, and pc, just don’t run the exe that’s on the drive you’re need stuff recovered from.
PCI may squalk once in awhile about a missing file and/or lock up once in awhile, but using task manager to exit PCI, then if it balks again (after you use task mgr to exit PCI), just re-boot the pc and use PCI again.
Those few tips always allow me to re-access files and/or a drive that balks at listing or showing files I know are there.
It seems PCI is many times only capable of continuosly copy-pasting just those files in any single given folder (exacerbating, but the darned thing simply works and its free).
I have the most luck only using PCI’s
“Recover Deleted File” tab (even though I never, myself, deleted any files).
Added tip is when at PCI’s ‘select drive’ window, my needed files are I think always in ‘..disk #*’ folder. Highlight it and click the green arrrow.
Also, some one to half dozen or so fould files may/will list w/their file names being corrupted usually by one letter or symbol. As such, those files won’t ‘save as’ to any location, so simply rename them.
Lastly, two general mentions about recovering files. I find it safer to copy-paste files rather than cut-paste because if anything goes wrong, it’s safer and easier to go back and re-try things. And no, PCI’ doesn’t to my knowledge afford ‘copy-paste’ or ‘cut-paste’ options, just “save to”, so ideally you’ll need to first have a folder prepared for the sent files because once PCI’ scans the drive, it won’t detect newly added drives or newly added folders in a newly added drive.
Why such a simple set of tips isn’t afforded, I guess because its freeware.
As for why I tagged this also as drive recovery, just because most would appreciate knowing how to backup files before formatting a problematic drive (usually caused by Windows issues as far as I’ve found).
Again, regarding drive recovery, short of umpteen pages of techie talk backed by expensive (usually un-needed) software, I find it’s safer, simplier and easier to just recover the data to a working drive, then format the darned problem drive.