Western Digital HD auto formatted when connected to Linksys Router

[Marksoho]

I tried to connect my movie-packed WD Elements 5 TB external drive to my Cisco Linksys EA6700 to see if I could get it live on the network.

When i plugged it I was able to discover it and saw that every single file was missing, and it seemingly had formatted and gone back to factory settings with the default programs following the disk.

When I checked the disk again in my Macbook Pro, I could here also see the seemingly formatted disk, but about half the disk was in use with "other files" as it stated.

Here we are talking about years and years of movie-storage, pictures and so forth. I cannot loose all of this because for a retarded router who seemingly auto deleted everything it can get its hand on.

What do I do now?

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to the TH community, Marksoho!

I'm sorry to hear about your detection issues with the WD Elements external drive. It's possible that connecting it to the router could have corrupted the file system. I'd recommend you to go to Disk Utility on your Mac and test the external HDD for defects or problems

Hopefully, this would help you gain back access to the files.
In the future, I'd strongly recommend you to keep at least one other copy of your files stored in a different storage device. This is the best way to prevent any data-loss headaches and keep your most precious files safe and sound.

Keep me posted. Hope this helps you!
SuperSoph_WD