Storage Solutions Unable to access files from 1 TB WD Passport External Drive USB 3.0

tommy_vercetti

tommy_vercetti

Skilled
I'm facing this weird issue, till yesterday I was able to access my 1 TB WD Passport External Drive USB 3.0, suddenly I'm not able to access it, It freezes my computer, I cannot open Disk Management, I cannot right click on it to check for errors, It gets detected in Devices and Printers, also shows up in Device Manager, I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit. The drive is in warranty and I cannot send it from RMA as I would lose my data, would I be able to claim warranty after sending it for Data Recovery, the data is very important, can anyone recommend a good Data Recovery option from Mumbai. Thanks in advance!
 
tommy_vercetti said:
I'm facing this weird issue, till yesterday I was able to access my 1 TB WD Passport External Drive USB 3.0, suddenly I'm not able to access it, It freezes my computer, I cannot open Disk Management, I cannot right click on it to check for errors, It gets detected in Devices and Printers, also shows up in Device Manager, I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit. The drive is in warranty and I cannot send it from RMA as I would lose my data, would I be able to claim warranty after sending it for Data Recovery, the data is very important, can anyone recommend a good Data Recovery option from Mumbai. Thanks in advance!
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Hey Man,

Sorry to hear about the situation. I would recommend you try Get data back. It helped many before. Maybe it works for you too. I am not sure if you would be able to claim warranty after sending it for Data Recovery. Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Sidz..
 
This issue has often been repeatedly reported about the WD Passport drives. Unfortunately WD does not publicly address the fact that they have an issue with the circuitry on these drives that often has to do with the USB ports getting shorted or some other circuitry issue. In many cases the corrupts the logic for the encryption and password protection thereby resulting in situations where even though passwords are not set, the drive gets locked and since it's hardware based encryption your options are limited. Google a few cases where guys have managed to fiddle with the circuit boards to revive their drives
 
Boot from a Linux Live CD and try accessing the drive.

Stellar-Phoenix offers excellent data recovery services. But, pl. note that the services are Expensive!
 
I'm going to try with a different computer, hoping that it works, it has lot of data, some can be downloaded, but would take around 500 GB, some old work trainings which trying to procure would be very very difficult and not sure if I would be able to get the complete content!
 
I just wanted to share my findings, yesterday I connected the drive to my work computer and I was able to see all the contents and folders did not check the validity of any file, so I quickly thought not that it was properly getting detected I ran Checkdisk on it from the GUI, and it was unable to find any errors, and after that bang! I was unable to access anything and it was freezing my PC, I disconnected it and tried again no luck, different USB port still no luck, back at home in my laptop still not getting detected! do not have a usb drive or cd to run live linus! I even opened the drive and unfortunately it comes with the USB3 connectors soldered to it so cannot try connecting it directly :-(
 
Is there no way you can get a USB DVD drive? Some Linux run from USB. Not sure which ones. But there are some small bundles available. Try that.

There is one more option, I can't write that publicly! Send me a PM, I am not able to find the send PM option in this new layout.
 
As suggested, try connecting the drive on a Linux OS. In many cases, Linux has helped me in disk management work when Windows could not. Hope you will be able to retrieve all the important data from the drive.

I own and use a WD Passport 1TB 3.0 too. This is a wake up call for me to start backing up all the important data on it.
 
Story telling time:-

So I returned Home at 10:30 pm after work and got back to work.

I used LinuxLive USB Creator 2.8.19 to create a slax-English-UK-7.0.5-i486.iso on USB, I tried to connect the disk to Windows no go, I then tried to connect it to the Laptop running SLAX, after couple of removals and connections I was able to see

fdisk -l

sdc1 getting detected, but was giving some I/O errors, so I again booted into Windows and tried to run the WDFirmware updater, it failed, and now my drive was in RAW format, one more try and it told me that it completed successfully still was unable to read the files not open the drive, just showing as drive with hdd symbol

Once again booted into SLAX, ran ntfsfix, it said something about unclean file system and started fixing something, the light was constantly blinking, after a few minutes the light stopped blinking and the ntfsfix completed susscessfully, I now tried to ls into the drive, I was able to delve deeper but it was painfully slow, I was able to recover a couple of important text files.

Now one more thing has cropped up, the drive now make a clicking sound

Next plan of action, I connected it to my GoFlex Net running Debain 6, installed ntfsprogs and was able to access the drive, painfully slowly when trying to access folders, will now be going through the contens to see exactly what I want? and also try to see if I'm able to recover large ISO's of various windows and Linux on it

P.S.
Do not try the steps that I have tried, you might not get the same results
 
One final thing, since the process is slow - as a matter of abundant precaution - I suggest that you provide additional cooling if possible.
Best option is AC room, if not, provide a fan nearby. The last thing one would want is non-response due to overheating.
 
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