External drive recovery
The external drives
- offer a convenient way to move a large amount of data between computers,
- provide a temporary storage for a data during "heavy" system maintenance, such as reinstallation,
- serve as a convenient backup media, fast and with ample capacity.
However, the external drives are prone to the same failures as their built-in counterparts are. The list includes both operator errors (deleting wrong files, formatting wrong volumes and the like) and the hardware failures. On top of that, there are some issues specific to the external drives
- increased risk of mechanical damage (more shocks and vibration),
- the external drive consists of more components, hence more ways in which things can go wrong.
This website deals with
- Types of the external drives.
- Comparison of the USB connections and the direct-to-motherboard connection.
- Complex external devices (Network Attached Storage, NAS).
If you just need to recover data from the failed external storage, just refer to the last section
Continue to Types of external drives.