WD Passport Not Read/Accessible and was hours earlier

[i_carson]

My WD Passport has worked without fail for the past 4 years. Recently, when I was transferring files from the windows partition of my MacBook, the drive would disconnect in the middle of data transfers. Since then, even when using it on my normal Lenovo laptop with Windows 8, I have had errors transferring data. Now it is not read properly by my laptop, and using the WD Data LifeGuard Diagnostics says that it failed a SMART status.

When I connect it, the light turns on, I can hear it running, and nothing seems at fault - but obviously that doesn't mean something isn't wrong. Does anyone have any tips or tricks to try and fix this? I am running an extended test now and will have the results in a few hours. I have used a terabyte of the 2 available and would hate to lose all the data (photos from trips, etc).

Thank you!

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there i_carson,

Sorry that you are facing some issues with your WD drive. 🙁
How is the drive recognized by Disk Management? Does it has healthy partitions and/or file system?
Depending on that, you may need to use some data/partition recovery software in order to retrieve the data stored on it. Check this out for example: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html

You can run Disk Check as well(Windows): http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/check-your-hard-disk-for-errors

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

 

[i_carson]

Thanks for you response. It is recognized by my laptop as Local Disk (E: ), and eventually this changes to the name of my wd passport. It shows the amount of space used and what is available, but whenever I try to open it, it takes awhile to show what files are available (and then takes even longer to open a file). Last night I read a solution here that recommended updating the firmware for the product, so I also did that through WD's website, if that matters.

I looked more into what part failed for the SMART check, and it seems that the issue is the "Reallocated Sector Count". It says the value is 133, threshold is 140.

I did the disk check on windows and got a pop-up saying "We haven't found any errors, you don't need to check this disk" but I'm running it anyway. It says it will finish in 2 minutes, but that time keeps changing. Power Data Recovery is scanning my external now, so I'll see what comes of that. I know the data is there - I can see it if I access the drive. My concern is just transferring it before the drive fails. I'll have to go buy a new external hd today since I cannot transfer all the files to my computer - not enough space!

 

[D_Know_WD]

I doubt that this is firmware related. Most probably, the HDD has some bad sectors related issues.
My advise wold be to transfer as much data as you can, even though that it may take a long time. Testing the HDD further, could speed up the degrading process.
After you have backed all your data up, you could try writing zeros on the drive with the DLG tool. This, could help sometimes. Then you can re-test it and see whether you will get similar results.

D_Know_WD

 

[i_carson]

Thanks for the help. I ordered a new external hd (since I do not have the space anywhere to store all my data on the old one) and will begin transferring files to that today. I'll write zeroes once all the data is safe, and hopefully can continue using the old external along with my new one.