Data Recovery for Failed External Drive

AgentOrange55

Commendable
Mar 31, 2016
2
0
1,520
I have a failed external hard drive (specifically a Passport that Windows 10 now says needs to be reformated), and am looking for a user-friendly way to recover it. Thanks to the helpful advice form older threads, I tried the open source Test Drive.....but I am not real computer savvy and couldn't figure the right selections from it choices it gave. I then tried Photo Rec which was able to recover my data, however all my file names were stripped, and do to the large amount of data I had on the file, it will be extremely hard to find what I'm looking for, plus the text files seem to be broken up into pieces--but at least I know my files are there. Probably 95% of my files on this disk had been backed up elsewhere, so I'm just looking to recover the 5% that weren't. I am quite willing to spend a reasonable amount of money for a "recovery of data for dummies" type program, any suggestions for what I'm looking for--software that can recover my data with the original file names, but which I don't have to know about all the details of the hard drive in order for it to work?
 
Solution
Sorry for my late update. Thank you SuperSoph_WD and S Haran for your suggestions. I had tried my harddrive on a windows 7 and used a different cable to no avail. The solution turned out to be easier than I thought, once I figured this out from the internet. I also ran the Data Lifeguard which found my drive, but found no file structure. I used "chkdsk -f driveletter" from the command prompt and Windows fixed it. I then made back-up to another hard drive, and although my Passport appears to be working now, I'm not real trusting of it. I will take SuperSoph's advice and keep 2 backups at all times. And thank you S Haran for the recovery software suggestions, I will keep those in mind in case I ever need them again.

From what I've...
Welcome to the TH community, AgentOrange55!

I'm truly sorry to hear about your failed WD My Passport external. :( I'd strongly recommend you to consider contacting a professional data recovery company for assistance. You can find our worldwide WD Data Recovery Partners on our official website.
Have you tried running the QUICK and EXTENDED tests from the Data LifeGuard Diagnostic tool ? It will help us determine the health and SMART status of the WD Passport HDD.

If it was only a formatting error that popped up on your Windows 10 computer, have you tried plugging the external drive to another system and change the USB cable as well?

In the future, I'd strongly recommend you to keep at least two identical copies of your files stored in different locations in order to prevent such data-loss headaches.

Hope this helps & Good luck!
SuperSoph_WD
 

S Haran

Distinguished
Jul 12, 2013
219
0
18,910
It's a good sign Photorec was able to recover data. Testdisk if you can operate the user interface might also give good results. You could experiment with Testdisk on another spare drive to get the hang of it. An alternative to Testdisk for partition repair is findandmount.com

Or recovery software like DMDE, R-Studio, UFSexplorer may be easier to work with.

One thing you may want to do first is check the health of the drive with DataLifeguard as suggested by SuperSoph. CrystalDiskInfo is also good for this.
 

AgentOrange55

Commendable
Mar 31, 2016
2
0
1,520
Sorry for my late update. Thank you SuperSoph_WD and S Haran for your suggestions. I had tried my harddrive on a windows 7 and used a different cable to no avail. The solution turned out to be easier than I thought, once I figured this out from the internet. I also ran the Data Lifeguard which found my drive, but found no file structure. I used "chkdsk -f driveletter" from the command prompt and Windows fixed it. I then made back-up to another hard drive, and although my Passport appears to be working now, I'm not real trusting of it. I will take SuperSoph's advice and keep 2 backups at all times. And thank you S Haran for the recovery software suggestions, I will keep those in mind in case I ever need them again.

From what I've read on-line, this kind of file structure hardware can be related to the harddrive not getting enough power (too long of a cord, using a front USB port), so I'm also going to try keeping it plugged in the back with a short cord to hopefully avoid this problem again.
 
Solution
Hey there again,AgentOrange55!

I'm glad you managed to resolve your issue!
However, I'd definitely keep an eye on the HDD every once in a while just to keep your mind at ease.
Having multiple backups will, indeed, save you a lot of headaches, so I'm glad we were able to help you out even a little bit.

Thanks for getting back and updating your thread! :)

Best of luck!
SuperSoph_WD