SysTools Hard Drive Data Viewer – View Files on Corrupt or Inaccessible Drives

SysTools Hard Drive Viewer is a freeware tool for Windows that lets you view files and folders on corrupted, formatted, or RAW hard drives to see if the data you want to recover is available. If it is, and you want to recover that lost data, you can then purchase the full pro program to do so. This is nice because you can find out if you really want the data on the drive and exactly how successful you will be, before you drop 40 bucks on a program that may or may not work.

What It Does

Once installed, you can browse NTFS and FAT drives that won't open normally, whether due to accidental formatting, file system errors, or partition loss. Launch the app, select the drive, and start a scan. Depending on the size of the drive and the power of your PC, this could take a while. So, grab a coffee. No admin rights are necessary; no data will be written to the disk during that scan.

When the scan is done, you can preview the folder structure and file details to assess the damage and see what is actually on the drive. It will highlight in red anything it finds that is deleted and recoverable.

You can preview the data of the file, and in some cases, like images, you can preview the file in question to see if you really want it.

At this point, Systools will offer a pro version that can recover the files for you.

Key Features

View files on inaccessible internal or external drives
Supports NTFS, FAT16, and FAT32
Works on RAW or unallocated drives
No recovery, just safe read-only access

Pros and Cons

Pros:

Read-only access for safe viewing of inaccessible drives

Supports internal and external drives with FAT/NTFS file systems

Doesn't require admin rights to run

Great for preliminary forensic or data-recovery checks

Cons:

Viewer only, no recovery or export unless you upgrade to the PRO version

Limited to FAT and NTFS, so no exFAT or EXT support

Doesn't support partition editing or deep scan features

Geek Verdict

SysTools Hard Drive Viewer is perfect for anyone wanting a quick, safe way to inspect damaged or unreadable drives and assess the recoverability options before spending money on a file recovery program. When your drive goes dark, and you want to take a look before committing to recovery, start here.