WD My Passport recognized but empty

[Scout2020]

Hi Everyone,

1.5TB WD Passport - almost completely full.

Connect w/USB, pc tries to read it, starts to load then I get a request to format the drive.

The drive itself appears empty (blue).

Is my data wiped or can anything be recovered?

Thanks for any advice
Scout2020

 

[DataMedic]

I agree with vembutech that you should check disk management. However before you worry about how it's partitioned (showing RAW, etc.) check the capacity (size of the drive). If it's showing zero or a much smaller size than 1.5Tb it's likely a hardware issue preventing it from working properly. If so, there's nothing you can do without professional tools. These drives are hardware level encrypted and have the USB built directly on the PCB with no SATA port. Software can't work on a drive that doesn't show it's proper capacity, and if you try it'll likely just give an error about the volume being write protected.

If though the capacity does show correctly then you should try the software option as Vembu mentioned. I'd recommend that you use R-Studio. You can download a demo here: http://www.r-tt.com/?XVCTM000

With the demo you can scan and see what's recoverable before buying the program. Thus preventing you from buying a program that might not work in your case anyway.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there Scout2020,

I would start with that you shouldn't format the drive in case you need the data.
You should be able to recover at least some of the data(if not all) if the drive is not physically damaged(in case of a missing file system let's say). Keep in mind that you should save any recovered data on another drive in order not to overwrite the current one.
Sometimes the windows error checking option solves issues related to hard drives prompting format. Though, if any bad sectors are found on the hard drive, ‘chkdsk’ will try to repair them.The data available on these particular sectors might be lost. So, you can try this if nothing else works.

How to run chkdsk: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Check-a-drive-for-errors

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

 

[DataMedic]

Hi Scout2020,

If your data has any value, then please disregard what D_Know_WD is telling you. Chkdsk is the absolute last thing you should ever do if you've lost data. Most often it will take a data recovery job that would cost a few hundred dollars and make it become a $2000 data recovery nightmare. Or make it impossible to get the data back.

Please understand that he's in the business of selling new hard drives (Offical WD Rep) not repairing them and getting data back like I am. I doubt he even cares if you get your data back, he cares more about warranty claims. Chkdsk might fix the drive, but even if it does it will lose some data in the process. Any drive that could be repaired by Chkdsk can easily be recovered using any data recovery software. If software doesn't work, neither will Chkdsk.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Even though I am a WD employee, I have absolutely no intentions of selling anything as I am not a sales person.
The very best move for him, would be to contact a data recovery company, but I was trying to provide different options.
Also, I support the idea of recovering the data with software tools(as I already mentioned), but the OP needs to be aware that the data could get further damaged.

D_Know_WD

 

[DataMedic]

Even though I am a WD employee, I have absolutely no intentions of selling anything as I am not a sales person.
The very best move for him, would be to contact a data recovery company, but I was trying to provide different options.
Also, I support the idea of recovering the data with software tools(as I already mentioned), but the OP needs to be aware that the data could get further damaged.

D_Know_WD

I in no way intended to make a personal attack. I was simply pointing out to the original poster that your profession centers around hardware sales/support rather than data recovery and that following your advise might lead to further data loss.