The recovery process when lost files are stored on an external hard drive can be simple or complicated. However, external hard drive data recovery is usually just the same to the process used for recovering lost data, even if they were stored in an internal hard drive or somewhere else. If you want to do external hard drive data recovery on your own, then you can definitely do so. But, this is only if you have the know-how when it comes to these things. If not, then you should let someone else do the external hard drive data recovery for you.
If the external hard drive that you have is connected to company network, then you will need to link this to a monitoring system, so that you can start with your external hard drive data recovery. You have to make sure that the process of your external hard drive data recovery is really finished and does not only appear to be so, or you will have to do this over again. Once you are done with the external hard drive data recovery, you have to test if the files that you retrieved are still in working condition. With this, you had better start with the files on the operational system first before you go on to the data containing information. If everything pans out, then your attempt at external hard drive data recovery has been successful and you ought to congratulate yourself.
However, if everything that you tried to do to perform your own external hard drive data recovery has failed, then there is another thing that you can do. You can approach an expert on external hard drive data recovery. An expert will evaluate the damage that was done on your external hard drive and do the external hard drive data recovery based on what he has discovered. Although this could be costly, you can retrieve as much of the data that you have lost as possible.