Summary:

The blog describes the importance of the external hard drives, how they help store video clips in a large volume and the situations that make video files corrupt. It also describes the process to recover video files using a Stellar  Photo Recovery Software and the tips to avoid video loss.

To backup desktop or laptop data into an external hard drive is, undoubtedly, a good option to keep your data secure. With large storage capacity and inexpensive availability of the USB drives, they become the most popular media to store and transfer multimedia files on a large scale.

But what if the external media turns corrupt?

Perhaps, it is an assumption that hard drives (be it internal or external) turn redundant all of sudden, but this is not the fact. Indeed, the drives always notify users by showing some symptoms that need to be considered in order to recover data saved within these storage devices. This is why it is recommended not to ignore the ‘clicking sound’ or the ‘scrapping noise’ coming out of the hard drive on startup.

External Hard Drive Video Loss/Corruption Scenario

If the external hard drive suddenly begins to perform slowly, this is an indication that the drive is not functioning well. In case, the user fails to deal with the situation, the severe consequences makes it essential to employ an efficient video recovery software to recover videos from the corrupt external drive along with another multimedia files.

Listed below are the possible reasons for the video files to turn corrupt:
• Closing the computer applications in an abnormal manner doesn’t cause much harm to the hard drive, but when it becomes a habit, it affects the hard drive badly that it fails to display any of the data components
• When there are frequent power failures, the hard drive gets bad sectors. This generally occurs when the read or write operation such as video upload or download is in process
• Malicious malware and bugs contaminates the computer programs which further corrupts the file system due to which the drive fails to play any particular or all video files stored within
• Hard drives are subject to stipulated data storage capacity; when data exceeds this particular limit, the storage media turns corrupt and the video files becomes inaccessible
• Logical errors such as system driver conflicts, software malfunction, human errors, etc. lead to hard drive failure or crash due to which the user fails to boot the drive and view all its contents. Ensure that you fix the corrupt hard drive before attempting to access it
• When the computer is placed in an environment where the device encounters severe heat or humidity, the external hard drive gets affected and becomes non-functional. Therefore, no data including video files and other multimedia contents are displayed.

How Photo Recovery Software Helps Retrieve Videos

Not all photo recovery software help to retrieve video clips from the hard drive, but those with extensive functionality does. Stellar Photo Recovery software allows recovering of video files from the external hard drives when they turn inaccessible or deleted accidentally. The tool can efficiently recover video clips that are deleted or have turned inaccessible due to:
• Detectable or undetectable bugs in the Operating System
• Excess or severe heat in the surrounding environment
• Frequent electricity failure or recurrent power surges
• Mechanical failure or breakdown of any hardware component
• Virus intrusion due to download of an untrustworthy app
• Downloading incompatible video editing applications from unauthorised resources

With the user-centric interface and easy-to-follow recovery procedure, the software offers retrieving photos from the damaged external drive. Let’s look at how it is done:

1. Run Stellar Photo Recovery to Recover Videos.
2. Select Recover Photo, Audio & Video button available on the main screen
3. All the hard drives will be displayed in the tool panel. Select the external hard drive from where the video clips need to be recovered
4. Make sure that the checkbox associated with Video is selected and then click on the Advanced Settings option
5. In the Advanced Settings window, click on the checkbox available with Video File Format to expand it
6. Then select the file formats corresponding to unreadable video clips that need to be recovered and click on OK
7. Next, click on the Scan Now button and the progress of the scanning process can be accessed within the tool window
8. Once the scan completes, all the video files that are found in the external hard drive will be displayed in the tool window
9. Select all or selective video files for recovery by checking the boxes against the filenames and then click on the Recover button
Note: If you do not know the exact name of the file, you can randomly select the displayed files to preview the video in the preview panel
10. Next, a dialog box will appear prompting the destination path, specify a location to store the recovered video files on hard drive.

Note: You can thereafter access the recovered video files in the corresponding root folders as per the selected file formats at the specified location on the hard drive. This way, you can recover videos from the external hard drive without formatting it.

The process is complete!

Tips to Avoid Video Loss or Corruption

• Never interrupt the external hard drive when video upload or download is in progress
• Never attempt to delete the video clip while playing the same file
• Do not attempt to edit or crop the video clips using an unreliable video-editing tool
• Avoid connecting the external hard drive to multiple computers as it may harm the drive
• Keep the drive up-to-date and virus-free by scanning it using a reliable antivirus application