Data Recovery and Disk Utilities Forum @R-TT

My WD Passport 4TB External Drive Failed. I got a warning about the drive and shut down the system. Checked the cables etc and powered back up.

Now WIN 10 doesn't recognize the drive. I can see it in Disk Manager, but it is listed as unknown with no size data AND it wants to be initialized.

I have tried various partition recovery and data recovery software with no luck

R-Studio sees the drive in the scan, but there are no options (everything is greyed out when I right click) and there is no empty space marker next to the drive to double click on.

Any help/Suggestions?

PS
I tried a new USB cable as well... no luck

Most likely it's a hardware problem. No data recovery software, R-Studio included, can help you in this case. Only a data recovery service can.
And don't try to initialize it, it may render data recover from this disk even harder.

Thanks for the fast response...

Most of what is on the drive I have back ups up... but I am not sure if 100% of it is... regardless, it is not worth the $$$ it would cost...

That being said... Since I am not sending it off.... if I were to initialize it... couldn't R-Studio get the info from an initialized drive? Harder, but not impossible?

At least the drive should be usable again... maybe.

I have back ups of "most" of what is on there... its what I can't remember what is on there that I worry about.

But regardless, I am not going to $end it off... so my only option would be re-initialize the drive and hope that R-Studio can scrape what data it can off.

At least it should make the drive usable again... not that I'd trust it.

I'm afraid you won't be able to initialize it. But if you can, R-Studio may find something, especially among Extra Found Files.

You are correct... it will not initialize. It is showing 0.0 kbs, and "it is too small to initialize"

Any other ideas?

Either to a trash bin, or to a service. Not to recover data but to repair the disk. Most likely this is the USB controller that failed. Changing it may be inexpensive, if data encryption wasn't enabled.

Alt wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 24, 2019 11:26 am

Most likely this is the USB controller that failed.

I'm sorry, but I've got to disagree here. In the hundreds, if not thousands of My Passport recoveries that we've done here in my lab I've not seen a single one that was a failure in the USB controller. 80% of the time it's a combination of bad sectors and firmware malfunction, the other 20% have a failed head stack assembly. Any of which will result in the drive reporting 0kb size to the OS.

Alt wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 24, 2019 11:26 am

Changing it may be inexpensive, if data encryption wasn't enabled.

You can't just straight change the USB bridge on these as it's built onto the HDD's own PCB. You'd need to transfer the U12 chip from one PCB to the other to make it compatible.

Also, encryption wouldn't be an issue as it's stored on the HDD's system area, and a hidden LBA address, both of which are on the platters not the PCB.

Bad Sectors and Firmware Malfunction....

Is that something a "home user" can fix? Doesn't sound like it involves opening the case (of the HD). Even still, I can't get it to be recognized, so not much I can do with it.

Kitchensnk wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 25, 2019 4:46 pm

Is that something a "home user" can fix?

Definitely no.