WD Elements Drive - Files are still visible but cannot be opened or copied

[aikavari]

Good afternoon guys!

I have a newish WD Elements 1TB Portable Drive which I bought about 6 months ago.

Yesterday, while I was copying a file for transfer between my wife's Macbook Air to my WIndow's laptop, I noted that copying was extremely slow (i.e., progress bar was not moving from 0% for 5 mins for a 1GB file). I cancelled the copy but after this the Macbook Air was no longer able to event detect the drive normally (though it is still visible under devices the actual drive is not available through Finder).

I tried hooking up the same drive to my Windows laptop and found that while the drive and the files inside are still visible, I can't copy them (at least some of them) to my laptop.

I left Chkdsk running overnight but found it still running this morning and unfortunately had to cancel it as I needed to run to work.

Any ideas on how I can fix this? 🙂

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, aikavari.

Sorry to hear about the issues you're having with your Elements drive. The chkdsk command is a big mistake in such cases. It sounds like there might be a lot of bad sectors accumulated or some other errors with the drive. So chkdsk or any other type of scan may further complicate the issue. What kind of file system does the drive use? exFAT?
I'd suggest that you try the HDD with a different USB cable (preferably shorter than 12"). If that doesn't help, try accessing it via Ubuntu Live USB/DVD, to see if it's properly recognized and if you can get to your data (this would not work straight away if the drive is formatted with the exFAT file system). You could also try with data recovery software: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html

Hope that helps. Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD

 

[aikavari]

Yes, it is formatted as exFAT. Actually, I can see the files in Windows, its just that when I try opening and copying them, it takes a bit of time (a minute for a small image) or fails. Ill look at the post you sent and see what I can do from there.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Well the exFAT is not natively supported by Linux without installing additional packages, so the Ubuntu Live option won't work here.
Here are a some more options for data recovery: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/filerecovery/tp/free-file-recovery-programs.htm
And of course the most reliable solution would be a data recovery company: WD Data Recovery Partners

Good luck, mate!

 

[aikavari]

Ok, I'll give the link a try and I'll post back if it helps. Thanks!

 

[aikavari]

Hi Boogieman_WD, I checked one of the tools in the link you provided. It was able to detect files that was "deleted" but my problem seems to be different... The files are not technically deleted and are still visible in the directories. The problem is that the files cannot be opened. In this case, what do you think is the issue? boot sector?

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Well it's possible, or it might be some other issue with the files system as well. I recommended data recovery software to see if you'd be able to recover the data even though it is visible as you are not able to copy it. You could try running the chkdsk command on the Windows computer, type the following: chkdsk X: /r /f (where "x" is the letter of the drive you wish to check, so don't forget to change it). Note that even though if this might fix file system errors, there's a slight chance that it could worsen the situation, so run it at your own discretion.