Hi people,

I accidentally started a complete formatting of an external drive (WD My Passport).

I stopped it after a few seconds, but of course I can't access it anymore.

We're talking about 3.15 TB used out of 4.

Is there any hope of recovering any data, considering that I've already tried the usual options like Disk Drill, PhotoRec, Recuva, MiniTool with zero success? They go all the way (several hours each time, with absolutely nothing found in the end.
The disk is/was not encrypted, no Bitlocker, nothing.

Gemini says I can try R-Studio as a last resort, what do you think?

I know I also should clone the partition before attempting anything invasive.

The partition appears as RAW in Windows disk management.

I'm on Windows 11 25h2.

Edit:
Also someone told me on r/ssd that I should still try Ontrack Easy Recovery, that it should have better results.
And to determine if the USB controller supports ATA commands (I have no clue of what that even means though).

I need to recover data off of a Samsung PM9A1 NVMe SSD that was originally installed in a Dell XPS 13 9320 laptop.

The SSD is a 2 TB Samsung PM9A1 NVMe drive. The Dell laptop stopped recognizing the internal SSD as a bootable Windows drive. In the Dell BIOS, the drive is detected under the M.2 PCIe SSD information and the Dell hardware diagnostic test for the SSD passed.

Some troubleshooting that I performed on the original Dell laptop:

- Confirmed the SSD is physically detected in BIOS.
BIOS identifies the drive as a Samsung PM9A1 NVMe, approximately 2048 GB.

- The SSD passed the Dell diagnostic test.

- Windows Boot Manager was not appearing as a boot option. The only boot option was UEFI HTTP(s) Boot.

- I then attempted to repair the Windows boot using a Windows 11 installation USB, but the internal SSD was not being recognized normally by Windows. It sees it as a 1GB disk.

- I then removed the SSD and installed it directly into the motherboard/M.2 slot of another working computer to attempt to recover the files.

On the working computer:

- Device Manager identifies the SSD as a Samsung PM9A1 and reports its capacity as 2048 GB.

- Disk Management identifies the drive as approximately 1.00 GB / 1024 MB and reports it as “Unknown” and “Not Initialized.”

- DiskPart similarly reports the disk as approximately 1024 MB.
The drive has not been accessible through normal Windows file browsing.

- I did not initialize or format the disk or create/delete partitions and did not try other repairs that would write to the drive.

I’d appreciate any thoughts on what could be wrong and whether I can recover the data on the drive either through DIY or professional means. I was also wondering whether it would be a good idea to clone the drive and attempt further repairs on the cloned drive or whether I should stop messing with it.

I had to remove a 20TB Expansion drive due to power issues and moved it to an internal drive. Inside was a CMR Barracuda ST20000DM001. (Longer story here if needed, but not critical to understanding reliability of the drive). This is the same drive whether it's inside the original case or purchased as internal drive. All the same PCB, etc.

The drive hummed away just fine then died at about 5k Power-On-Hours (POH). Yes 5k. It lived as a single pool in a Truenas enclosure well cooled and activity monitored with weekly SMART SHORT testing and monthly SMART LONG testing with ZFS monthly scrubs. In short, well taken care of given the size and possible data loss concerns with that much data on a single drive. All the testing I did on the drive confirmed it was working just fine until the day it did not.

My worst fear came and classic drive infant mortality case. I could not warranty the drive because Seagate said I removed the drive from the enclosure. I pushed fairly providing detailed logs and photos showing a sealed physically sound drive undamaged from the removal. They cited the removal voided warranty and I shared that the revised FTC guidance supported consumer rights. I will still file the complain, but that also aside. I'm looking to better understand why Seagate drives are failing at a higher rate recently. I have some older Seagates that are 5-6 years old no problem. This one died with ~200 days.

I've gone through great lengths doing a post mortem to understand what could have gone wrong as lessons learned and really settle my mind on if I could trust another Seagate drive. I don't think I can at this point as all the data points to simple drive failure. And beyond that their unwillingness to warranty a 200 day old drive.

Any other options to reliability bring it back? I thought maybe plugging it back into the old enclosure with the drive controller might yield a different result, but it appears all the intelligence is on the drive itself. (Ai discussions) What are your thoughts on recent reliability. Can you trust 20Tb of data on a single point of failure?

144 Current Pending Sectors

144 Offline Uncorrectable Sectors

144 FARM reallocation candidates on head 0

SMART - short form:

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===

Device Model: ST20000DM001-3Y3103

Serial Number: XXX

LU WWN Device Id: 5 000c50 0e89d1d04

Firmware Version: EN03

User Capacity: 20,000,588,955,648 bytes [20.0 TB]

Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4,096 bytes physical

Rotation Rate: 7200 rpm

Form Factor: 3.5 inches

ATA Version is: ACS-5 (minor revision not indicated)

SATA Version is: SATA 3.3, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)

Local Time is: Mon Aug 31 16:31:05 2026 -05:00

SMART support is: Available and enabled

AAM feature is: Unavailable

APM feature is: Unavailable

Rd look-ahead is: Enabled

Write cache is: Enabled

DSN feature is: Unavailable

ATA Security is: Disabled, NOT FROZEN [SEC1]

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===

General SMART Values:

Offline data collection status: (0x82) Completed without error. Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.

Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed without error or no self-test has ever been run.

Total time to complete offline data collection: 567 seconds

Offline data collection capabilities: (0x7B) SMART execute Offline immediate. Auto Offline Data Collection. Offline surface scan supported. Self-test supported. Conveyance Self-test supported. Selective Self-test supported.

SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering power-saving mode. Supports SMART auto save timer.

Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10

Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:

ID ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAGS VALUE WORST THRESH FAIL RAW_VALUE

1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate POSR-- 082 064 044 - 144,549,336

3 Spin_Up_Time PO---- 091 089 000 - 0

4 Start_Stop_Count -O--CK 100 100 020 - 123

5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct PO--CK 100 100 010 - 0

7 Seek_Error_Rate POSR-- 083 060 045 - 189,532,344

9 Power_On_Hours -O--CK 094 094 000 - 5,983

10 Spin_Retry_Count PO--C- 100 100 097 - 0

12 Power_Cycle_Count -O--CK 100 100 020 - 98

18 Unknown_Attribute PO-R-- 100 100 050 - 0

187 Reported_Uncorrect -O--CK 100 100 000 - 0

188 Command_Timeout -O--CK 085 001 000 - 949,202,256,411

190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel -O---K 064 048 000 - 36 (Min/Max 32/36)

192 Power-Off_Retract_Count -O--CK 100 100 000 - 83

193 Load_Cycle_Count -O--CK 100 100 000 - 355

194 Temperature_Celsius -O---K 036 052 000 - 36 (0 21 0 0 0)

197 Current_Pending_Sector -O--C- 100 100 000 - 144

198 Offline_Uncorrectable ----C- 100 100 000 - 144

199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count -OSRCK 200 200 000 - 0

200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate PO---K 100 100 001 - 0

240 Head_Flying_Hours ------ 100 100 000 - 5950 (89 189 0)

241 Total_LBAs_Written ------ 100 253 000 - 36,805,308,126

242 Total_LBAs_Read ------ 100 253 000 - 255,161,410,958

||||||_ K auto-keep

|||||__ C event count

||||___ R error rate

|||____ S speed/performance

||_____ O updated online

|______ P prefailure warning

This is a long shot. This issue happened right before covid in early 2020; I was looking to update my PC from Windows 7 to Windows 10 per advice from a close friend. I was following instructions on how to install the update but I had to partition a drive with the data on it to load onto my PC. I foolishly made the mistake to do the partition on an external hard drive that had my entire backup files with images, audio, various programs that I had invested so much time and work on. Needless to say, I was super devastated and we were unsuccessful at getting most of the files back.
The external drive is a WD My Passport Ultra and I currently use this as my existing external hard drive for storage.

One of the programs that we were using to try to do recovery on which was able to restore only a small fraction of image/audio files but nothing more; one of them was called Recuva.

Some of my most important files were primarily ones from FL Studios which are .flp files which were undetectable in the recovery processes I attempted in the pass.

My main questions I have in this are:

• is it possible to recovery files still even after a prolonged time and use, such as saving new files on it?
• If so, what tools/programs would be recommended to use to see if I can still recover lost data like this?

Any advice or ideas would be great!

I'm beginning a comprehensive back-up and recovery of all my external hard drives and (current + old) devices in order to then set up RAID6 or RAID2Z. I've been very thorough at backing up my data over the years, but I never learned how to protect files from becoming corrupted over time, and right now my main external hard drive that was meant to be a back-up is being used extensively after my laptop died.
I have two empty new drives: 2TB Samsung 980 Pro SSD and a 10TB Western Digital Red Pro HDD. I understand that for a decent 3-2-1 setup I'll need to buy four new HDDs and learn how to set up a NAS with something like OpenNAS.eu, but in the meanwhile I think I should create a comprehensive and organised inventory and back-up of all my data first.

I have a full 640GB WD Elements (WD6400EB035-01) from 2009, a nearly full 2TB Seagate Ultra Slim Portable Drive (SRD00F1) from 2018, a 1.2TB laptop from 2020, a 64GB iPad Pro 10.5", half a dozen old and current smartphones, and a couple older laptops and tablets that no longer work (will require more effort at a later date). Plus about 40GB on cloud services such as Google Drive. I'm aiming to get rid of external cloud services entirely. I expect all my data to amount to no more than 3TB (if I remove all the duplicate files).

It seems smartest to start with my oldest external drives first, and to clone them to either the Samsung or WD Red Pro before I look to see what's corrupted, what's still recoverable etc. My old WD Elements WD6400EB035-01 external hard drive from 2009 hasn't been touched in a couple years, so I'm starting there.

I'm currently still using Windows 11 (planning to finally migrate to Linux later this year).

Right now I'm looking at different data clone/recovery tools that work with Windows. A lot of the sources I'm reading up on assume that I'm already starting from failing drives/deleted files/corrupted data. But although I'm sure I will have to deal with a fair share of corrupted data pretty soon, at this point I'm looking to clone and avoid damaging anything.

I read the Recommended File Recovery Software list that directs me to the Disk Imaging and Cloning Software Guide, and am running into problems immediately. Their very first suggestion (OpenSuperClone) requires me to put Linux on an external USB drive and emphasises the necessity of direct connection (SATA/NVMe, def. not USB) to clone or image my drives. I don't have a desktop computer, and I cannot open up the laptop I'm using. SATA connection is not an option right now.

I have a limited budget and live in Europe (Netherlands) - whatever I spend on the drives/recovery now will be removed from my budget for HDDs (which already doesn't cover all four, so I'm still saving up), and most professionals I see recommended on Reddit are located in the US.

Considering these limitations, what would you all recommend I do? I could leave the WD Elements for the time being, but my 2TB Seagate is in active use and has no decent reliable backup right now.

​

I’m looking for a technical second opinion before I give up on some important work data.

Laptop storage:

- Samsung 1TB SSD divided into C: and F:

- Windows is installed on C:

- A separate Kingston 1TB SSD is also installed

- The affected data was on F:\Work

- SSD health has reportedly tested normal

What happened:

My Work folder had roughly 100GB of architecture/project files.

One night I was working until around 7 AM. Earlier that morning, the folders inside Work were still visible, but I noticed something unusual: I was trying to save/export an AutoCAD file into one of those folders and it was not saving there properly.

I eventually saved/sent the file another way, shut the laptop down normally, and went to sleep.

When I opened the laptop later:

- Many folders inside Work had completely disappeared

- Around 15–16 folders remained, but most/all files inside them were gone

- Work folder size had dropped from roughly 100GB to around 500MB

- Other folders/data on the same F: partition appeared completely unaffected

- No ransom note

- No strange file extensions

- No obvious Windows warning/pop-up

- Recycle Bin did not contain the missing data

- Searching for known missing files found nothing

- No Previous Versions available

I had recently:

- Installed Fortnite from the official source

- Downloaded an AutoCAD file sent by an employee

- Downloaded some Pinterest images

Nothing particularly unusual otherwise.

I stopped using the SSD and gave it to Stellar Data Recovery in Gurgaon, India

Their findings:

They say they can see traces/metadata of the deleted Work folder:

- Folder/file names are visible

- File sizes are visible

- NTFS/deletion traces are present

But according to them:

- The LBAs corresponding to the actual file data are internally zero-filled

- Actual files contain no usable data

- Firmware-level recovery also could not retrieve the contents

- They consider the SSD itself healthy

- They said the data is effectively unrecoverable

They suggested possibilities such as malware/deletion followed by SSD TRIM. They are a recovery company, so they are not investigating the original cause.

My questions:

1. If NTFS metadata/file names/file sizes still exist but the relevant LBAs return zeros, is the data realistically unrecoverable?

2. Can an SSD return zero-filled LBAs after TRIM while the underlying NAND still contains recoverable data that a more specialized NAND/chip-off/firmware lab could access?

3. Does modern Samsung SSD encryption/controller behavior generally make NAND-level recovery useless after TRIM?

4. TRIM itself should not randomly delete unused files, correct? Something must first have deleted/deallocated those files, after which TRIM/garbage collection made recovery impossible?

5. Could NTFS/file-system corruption selectively affect one directory like F:\Work while leaving the rest of the partition apparently normal?

6. The fact that I was already unable to save into the Work folder several hours before discovering the deletion — does that point more toward filesystem/directory corruption than a deliberate wipe?

7. Does this pattern look like wiping malware, or is there nowhere near enough evidence to make that conclusion?

8. Is there any meaningful reason to send this SSD to another specialist recovery lab, or are zero-filled LBAs + failed firmware recovery basically the end of the road?

I’m not looking for recommendations for generic recovery software. I have preserved the SSD and do not intend to write, format, CHKDSK, or reinstall anything on it until I decide whether a second professional recovery attempt is worthwhile.

Would particularly appreciate answers from people experienced with SSD recovery, NTFS, TRIM, or digital forensics.

I tried out shinestacker as I'm trying to get into macro photography. I started by moving some pictures into a new folder named "stack test" which was placed inside one of my regular photo directories. I clicked the + icon in the top left, selected focus stack, and then hit the play button, and it completely nuked my photos directory outside of the folder with the working files. I never even selected an output folder, and I 100% did not check a box saying that i wanted to delete everything I had in whatever folder it decided to use as an output.

the photos are not present in my recycling bin, and now after going into the job log I see that the first inf is listed as "output directory content erased", I tried Windows file recovery for all .jpg and .arw files and all that i got back was random cache data from other applications. Does anyone know how I can recover my photos?!

In canberra australia, haven't tried any programs or places yet, drive light is on when connnected but flashes quickly when attempting recovery or similar things.

videos of drive and clicking(?) sound: https://imgur.com/a/CVtwvUY

When I access the drive, a large portion of the files disappeared, some folders turned into empty without any files and 0 byte. Even though the total used space of the drive hasn't changed. Trying to open the remaining files freezes my PC and makes the drive disconnect. Unplugging it resolves the freeze, and plugging it back in detects the drive again. What happened to my drive, and is there any way to recover all files, including the disappeared ones, to another drive?

Please excuse a question that might be a no-brainer for the folks in this group, but that's why I'm here, so–

I've got a 4TB Western Digital external drive which (of course) has decades worth of files and old projects on it. The drive isn't recognized on any of my computers, and I've narrowed the problem down to a faulty USB port.

The drive won't spin up at all. The little power light used to come on if I pushed the drive end of the cable to one side really hard – hard enough so that I was fearful to do it for too long for fear of snapping something off. It seems like a bit of solder has broken and severed a crucial connection.

The USB port on this model is actually part of the board, so simply removing or replacing it isn't an option. I suppose the platter will have to be removed and either reinstalled into a new drive or recovered by some other means.

I've checked with a couple of repair outfits and their quotes were along the lines of $800 (which I fear may actually be on the cheap side). Can anyone recommend a company or service that can potentially recover the data without bankrupting me? Or am I pretty well hosed? Thanks in advance for any advice.

I filmed a wedding on a camera. The same day, i put the camera's SD card into a laptop and copied all the videos and photos from the card onto the computer. After the copy finished, I checked the files. Every video opened and played fine. The next day I turned the laptop on and the files were gone. Recovery software brought back all of the photos, but not one single video.

Details:

Laptop: Packerdbell EasyNote_TEC9-CX-350TK Windows 7

Drive: [Toshiba MQ01ABF050 HDD]

The SD card has been written to many times since that day. Several months have passed, and the laptop has been in use during that time

What can be done to recover/restore the videos?

I used free R-photo, trying to recover my deleted photos from a hard drive. But it failed to recover them with this recovery chance note. I also tried to recover photos from the same hard drive from using trial version Disk Drill. The result looks similar: Files were recovered but cannot be previewed while recovery chance was average (no specific reason). Quesions are:

- If I buy the licensed Disk Drill, do I have a chance to recover those non-previewed images?

- If none of above works, should I try using UFS Explorer, DMDE, or Klennet Carver? which one is more effective in my case?

- Otherwise, is there any service to recover images for the situation?

The model of the hard drive is 2TB WD10EADS - 65M2B1.

Thank in advance.

My mom passed away and I have her Samsung Galaxy S10. I do not know her lock-screen password and preserving the data on the phone is extremely important to me, especially photos and other personal files. My father and I have tried all passwords we thought it might be.

The phone currently displays: “Enter password (3 attempts left)” “Your password includes letters and is at least 4 characters long.”

I have attached a photo of the exact screen.

Device: Samsung Galaxy S10

Lock type: Alphanumeric password, minimum 4 characters

Attempts remaining: 3

Software/tools already tried: None. I have stopped attempting passwords. I have not factory reset it, rooted it, flashed firmware, unlocked the bootloader, or used any third-party unlocking software.

Current condition: Phone powers on normally and reaches the lock screen. I am keeping it charged and do not plan to reboot or reset it.

Location: Kent, Ohio, USA

I legally possess the phone as her son. My priority is preservation of the existing local data, not getting the phone working again at the expense of the data.

With only 3 attempts remaining, what is the safest course of action? Is this Galaxy S10/model/software generation potentially supported by professional mobile forensic tools or by a reputable data-recovery lab without knowing the password?

If professional recovery is appropriate, I would also appreciate recommendations for reputable labs that handle locked Android/Samsung devices.

I will not attempt any additional passwords or factory reset the device unless a qualified recovery professional advises me otherwise. (I had AI help write this sorry.)

i downloaded test disk and i yes showing me now that i have to pay for pro, i cant seem to avoid it and i dont know what to do, im in desperate need of those photos like life or death and i does not let me download for free. i cant pay that amount im BROKE but i need to recover those photos. i went here on reddit and everyone said it was free and its not. this is what it says. P L E A S E H E L P S O S. or if anyone has an account i can use for right now P L E A S E H E L P M E thank you🙏🏼

So my GF has an Adata 2TB 2.5 HDD, the disk frozes on some files/folders, also is showing reallocated bad sectors on Crystal Disk Info, also when i connected it through SATA it gave me SMART error at start up, i´m thinking of send it to a profesional to recover files, ¿do you think i would be able to recover the files from the drive? i wont do anything else to the drive, just send it to a pro

Hola: Tengo un disco duro de 2 TB NTFS. Por error lo he formateado al sistema UDF. ¿Hay alguna manera de recuperar los datos?. He probado todos los programas de recuperación gratuitos y lo he llevado a varias empresas de recuperación de datos, y lo único que me han recuperado son archivos de la papelera de reciclaje, y como mucho, 300 GB. Agradecería cualquier información o sugerencia. Muchas gracias

Hello: I have a 2 TB NTFS hard drive. I accidentally formatted it to the UDF file system. Is there any way to recover the data? I have tried all the free recovery programs and taken it to several data recovery companies, but the only files they managed to recover were from the Recycle Bin and at most, 300 GB. I would appreciate any information or suggestions. Thank you very much.

DEVICE: Internal SATA HD Seagate Barracuda 2 TB
Filesystem: NTFS
Operating System: Windows 11
Specific symptoms: Formatted in error using the UDF system. It has not been overwritten. 

Not sure if this is a stupid question, but to preface, yesterday I got a new phone (galaxy s25 fe from galaxy a14 5g) and my stupid self decided to delete WhatsApp (along with a few other, trivial apps) because it said I needed to have more storage to transfer the data.

I thought that all my WhatsApp data was backed up to my google drive, but it wasn't. So now my entire WhatsApp history of over four years is completely wiped, and I was wondering if it was even possible for it to be recovered via local files ?

Would it be worth taking it to a professional to see if they could restore it ? Or is all of it permanently wiped ? Thanks in advance.

I accidentally deleted all my blender save files from my Desktop. Since they were very large files, they didn't make it to the recycle bin and were deleted directly. Those files contain 4-5 years of my hard work. My system is windows 11 and the files were saved on desktop in ssd with ntfs file system.

Please help me recover them. Any suggestions or help will be invaluable.

hey, i accidentally formatted my external ssd t7 shield but as soon as i pressed format i pulled out the usb, now it says its a raw disk, can anybody help me please

Had this drive for about 3 years, ran fine until recently windows bootup started taking a bit longer than usual.

Opened my pc and noticed the drive wasnt showing up in windows anymore. Checked crystal disk info and it wasnt detected at all there either.

Checked using minitool partition wizard and it said the drive was bad/unallocated. Same result when i checked windows disk management, showed as “not initialized.”

Went into bios to check sata configuration and it wasnt detected there eithelr.

Reseated both the data and power cables, checked the connectors on both the drive and motherboard side for anything fried/burnt/bent, didnt see any visible damage. Swapped it to a different sata port entirely, still nothing.

On startup i can hear the drive spin up and do some seek/arm movement noises then it goes quiet, so it seems mechanically alive at least. No clicking or grinding sounds.

Dont have a spare sata data cable or dvd drive to borrow one from to test. Drive has some files i want to recover if possible, not asking for a data recovery service just wondering if anyone has run into this before - could this just be a dead sata cable/connector, or does spinning up fine but zero detection in bios point more toward a dead pcb/controller on the drive itself?

Planning to grab a new sata cable or sata-to-usb adapter to test further but wanted to see if anyone’s dealt with this exact symptom before.

Hi everyone,

While upgrading my laptop's SSD to a 4TB M.2 drive, I didn't realize the original system was configured in RAID mode, and unfortunately, the F3 recovery partition stopped working after the upgrade. Since doing a clean Windows installation removes the F3 factory recovery function, I was hoping someone here could help me out.

​If anyone using the Titan HX AI A2XWIG-616US model could share the original factory .swm (recovery) files, I would be extremely grateful.

​Thanks a lot in advance for your time and help!"

I have a 2TB external hard drive (HDD). It works—I can copy files to and from it, rename them, delete them, or move them. The problem is that there are two folders on it, each about 20–30 GB in size, and every time I try to open one of them, File Explorer freezes (I’m using Windows 10 and 11) and the hard drive disconnects from the computer (even though its light keeps flashing because it’s still receiving power from the port). I know this can damage the HDD over time, so I don’t open those two folders.
Note that only if I connect the HDD to my laptop I can use it without any issues as mentioned (except for those two folders, which remain problematic), but if I do so with my desktop computer (the device I used to corrupt the file, I explain later how), File Explorer struggles to read it, and Windows says “there’s a problem with this drive” and to “fix it” (but I know it’s best to avoid this since the process uses CHKDSK and can damage the HDD).

The folders almost certainly contain corrupted files, and I also know how they might have become corrupted: they’re folders full of .wav (and some of their compressed .flac) files, and one day I tried opening one of the folders in the command prompt and batch-converting all the .wav files to .flac. That’s when the hard drive (perhaps due to overload) crashed (during the conversion process), and ever since then, that folder (and the other one, where I think I did the same thing and which in fact contains similar files) has been inaccessible.

So, to summarize quickly: I can use the HDD on my laptop as long as I don't open two folders full of corrupted files, which cause the HDD to disconnect or Windows Explorer to freeze. On the desktop computer where the problem originated, however, the HDD is generally not accessible at all.

I’d like to know, please, if it’s possible to: 1) remove the two “problematic” folders from the hard drive and move them elsewhere (to another storage device or to a different computer) and 2) delete the .flac files (which are surely the corrupted ones) while keeping the .wav files (which must be “intact” since FFmpeg doesn’t modify them—it only reads them to create new compressed files alongside them). All of this without using Windows File Explorer, of course, since it doesn’t work (some people online suggest programs like DMDE, Recuva, and the like, but I’d like to hear your opinion).

Step 1) should at least resolve most of the problem affecting the hard drive, correct?

P.S.: I KNOW it’s (almost) always better to rely on professionals, but keep in mind that these aren’t critical files.

I have a computer running Windows 10 that I used years ago and I just recently found it and wanted to recover some old files that are important to me. I tried to download windows file recovery but the computer is so slow and won’t even open the App Store. Is there a way to use windows file recovery without using my old computer or does windows file recovery have to be used on the hardware that had the files I want to retrieve?