WD Passport recover after re-partitioning

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texasbonfire

Reputable
Jun 17, 2014
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4,510
WD Passport used to backup work laptop that is docked and on a network at a university. Malware hit the entire system so when I backed up, my Passport was hit too (all in the same few hours). Saw on WD forum to re-partition since the Passport kept saying it needed to be formatted. Now the laptop sees the Passport, but I need to find any salvageable data. No lectures on backing things up please. My files were backed up weekly on the Passport from the laptop hard drive. The laptop was serviced by IT for a virus 5 months ago. Found out last week that my files were not being regularly backed up on network since that point. Will be signing up for cloud service too after all of this!! (BTW... I am in Emergency Mgmt & actually had an exercise about this type of thing a few months ago. No one thought it could happen...)
 
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M
Hi

What operating system was used to format drive ?
(Windows or mac or ... and full details of version )
how big is drive and how full was it ?

If at a university is there a couse on computer science or anything similar (computer forensics even better)?
ask a lecturer or the IT department for advice ?

The best advice I can give is to go to a computer professional (usually expensive)

The next best is to get another hard drive of similar or larger size.
then using operating system software which mounts problem drive read only
(Linux live distribution or write blocker?)

clone the drive and do your repairs on the clone drive

If hard drive has physical faults something like ddrescue will work round bad sectors instead of crashing...
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mbarnes86

Splendid
Sep 16, 2010
3,839
7
26,965
Hi

What operating system was used to format drive ?
(Windows or mac or ... and full details of version )
how big is drive and how full was it ?

If at a university is there a couse on computer science or anything similar (computer forensics even better)?
ask a lecturer or the IT department for advice ?

The best advice I can give is to go to a computer professional (usually expensive)

The next best is to get another hard drive of similar or larger size.
then using operating system software which mounts problem drive read only
(Linux live distribution or write blocker?)

clone the drive and do your repairs on the clone drive

If hard drive has physical faults something like ddrescue will work round bad sectors instead of crashing

recover files to network drive, local hard disk or a third external hard drive

There are a lot of recovery programs which can resurect data from a formatted hard drive provided you did not use Windows Vista or later and do a long format (quick format box not ticked)

But in most cases you loose file names, folders and large files which are fragmented

free software:-
TestDisk Photorecovery suit 6 or 7 is well known
also Recuva, Easeus

or look at Hirens Boot CD which also has a selection of recovery programs

or for money or trial version which needs activation to do any file recovery

Ontrack easy recovery pro
Recover My Files (by Crocodile Software)


regards
Mike Barnes
 
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