How to Find Pictures on External Hard Drive (3 Ways)

Most users prefer to save their photos on an external hard drive for data security. But sometimes when you connect it to a computer to view or manage pictures, you can’t find them there. This problem is not rare, especially if you are using an old external hard drive. 

So, how to find pictures on external hard drive?

If you have no idea about this, let's dive into more of the missing picture scenarios and corresponding solutions below.

Common situations of finding pictures on external hard drive

Before exploring solutions, let's look at some common scenarios where you need to find photos on external hard drive. 

🗑 The picture is deleted on the hard drive. Accidental deletion, NTFS to FAT hard disk, metadata structure damage, etc. may cause pictures to be deleted.
❗ Picture loss from different sources. You have a large number of images on your hard disk in various formats, such as JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and so on. It is not an easy task to recover or find them when they are misplaced in certain folders or subfolders.
👴 The picture is hidden. In some cases, due to a virus or malware attack, encryption, etc., your hard drive will not show pictures even if there are pictures on your hard drive.
🔧 The hard drive has crashed. Corrupted firmware or hardware failure crashed the drive, and some files, including pictures, were lost.

How to find all pictures on external hard drive

Now, here are five different ways for different situations to find photos on external hard drive. The first three methods are mainly used to find and recover deleted or lost pictures, while the latter two are to find some hidden pictures.

Solution 1. Find pictures on external hard drive using software ★★★ ★★

The easiest way to find all lost or deleted pictures on external hard drive is to use professional data recovery software. FastRecovery is a reliable tool, released by AOMEI, benchmarking in the data recovery industry, and highly compatible with Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, and Windows Server. 

FastRecovery

Trustworthy Photo Recovery Software for Windows

•  The simple and intuitive interface makes it easy for anyone to perform the entire process.
• Top algorithms - Integrate Quick Scan and Deep Scan to find all deleted or missing files, ensuring a high recovery rate. 
• Recover deleted PNG files, JPG/JPEG, TIF, GIF, PSD, X3F, SVG, ARW, and a wide range of image formats. 
• Display all recoverable data by Type or Path, allowing you to sort, search, filter, and preview files, making it easier and faster to find files.
• Recover photos from formatted hard drive, accidental deletion, system crashes, virus attack, and more scenarios.

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Step 1. Connect your external drive to a Windows PC and be sure it's recognized. Open FastRecovery, click Deleted Files Recovery, specifically designed for quick recovery. 

Step 2. Hover the mouse over the drive, and click Scan to scan it.

Step 3. It will check all lost files on this disk automatically with Quick Scan. During scanning, you can click the Stop or Pause button if you select the wrong disk or something goes wrong.

Step 4. Wait for the final scanning results. To find pictures on external hard drive, searching by type is more effective than by path. You can also combine it with options to sort, search, filter, and preview files. 

• Specify the data type (e.g., Images) and specific formats (e.g., JPG, PNG, TIF, GIF, PSD, SVG, X3F, etc). Then, click the arrow next to type, size, date modified, etc., to sort files.
• For a specific image file or format, directly type the file name or extension in the search box.
• Or use the filter feature, similar to the Type category, allowing you to further specify the size of files, from less than 512 KB to 1GB above.
• Once found, double-click the files to preview. 

Step 5. Select the pictures you need, and click Recover.

Step 6. You will be asked to select a location to save the recovered files. Don't save files to where you deleted pictures, as it will cause data overwriting.

In addition, FastRecovery supports recovering deleted files in over 1000 formats. So besides images, you can also use it to recover documents, videos(e.g., recover deleted WMV videos), audios, emails, compressed files, etc.

Solution 2. View hidden photos on external hard drive using File Explorer

Finding hidden pictures is not an easy task because you don't know where those pictures are placed. Luckily, the Hidden items in File Explorer come to help.

Step 1. Open File Explorer. If you can't find it, you can search for it from the search bar.

Step 2. Click on the View tab and select hidden items.

Step 3. To go into detail, double-click on Options.

Step 4. In the View tab, scroll down to the Advanced settings section and check the Show Hidden files, folders, drives option. Alternatively, you can also uncheck the Hide protected operating system files option.

Step 5. Click Apply and tap OK.

Solution 3. Find hidden photos on external hard drive using CMD

In addition to finding hidden photos from File Explorer, you can also use the attrib command to show hidden pictures. It is available from the command prompt of all Windows operating systems.

Step 1. Connect your external drive to the computer. Type cmd in the search box, right-click Command Prompt and choose Run as administrator.

Step 2. Type the command in the window: attrib -h -r -s /s /d drive letter:\*.* and hit Enter. (Replace the “drive letter” in the command with the letter of your drive.)

For example, if your drive letter is F:, the command you need to type is: attrib -h -r -s /s /d F:\*.*

Conclusion

That’s all for how to find pictures on external hard drive. When you can't find your photos on your hard drive, you can use the 4 useful methods in this guide to find them. 

In order to find and restore pictures faster and more accurately, it is recommended that you use FastRecovery. With this tool, you can easily recover permanently deleted files from any storage devices including external hard drive in Windows 7,8,10,11.

FastRecovery

Best software to find pictures on external hard drive without backup images

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Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7& Server

FAQs 

1. How do I retrieve photos from an external hard drive？

To retrieve photos from an external hard drive, you must consider whether you added new data to this drive or did any operation causing data overwriting. If not, you can try reliable data recovery software, such as FastRecovery, to retrieve photos. 

2. How can I see what is stored on my external hard drive?

To see what is stored on my external hard drive, connect your external hard drive to a working computer first. Then, check if it's displayed in File Explorer. If not, double-click it to view all the data on the external disk. At last, remember to use the safe eject option to disconnect it, which is a good habit to prevent data loss.

3. Step-by-step guide to find photos on external hard drive

To find photos on external hard drive, you can follow the step-by-step guide below.

• Download and install a reliable data recovery software. Then, open it and click Deleted Files Recovery. 
• Select the drive containing deleted photos and click Scan.
• Wait for the scanning result. Select the files you want to recover and click the Recover button.
• Select a new location (not the original drive) to save the recovered photos. 

4. Why can't I find my files on my external hard drive?

The reasons why I can't find files on the external hard drive are different.

• First, please check if your external hard drive is recognized by Windows. If not, the connection is loose or damaged.
• Also, your files may be deleted. The reason is likely to be accidental deletion, file system errors, virus attacks, etc.
• In addition, your files may be hidden. 
• ......

5. How do I access an external hard drive that is not showing up?

To access an external hard drive that is not showing up, try checking if it's displayed in Disk Management. Sometimes, it will show up as Unallocated, Not Initialized, or just missing a drive letter

• If it's Unallocated, try to create a new simple volume with it.
• If it's Not Initialized, right-click the disk and initialize it.
• If it's just missing a drive letter, right-click the disk and select Change Drive Letter and Paths to add a new one.