WD Ext HD 'My Passport' (2tb 3.0 USB) isn't working. Need help to recover files!

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mikeinflorida

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Aug 18, 2015
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I have a Western Digital Ext HD 2tb (P/N WDBY8L00200BBK-01).

It just stopped working earlier. The HD is recognized but it shows 0 data ... in 'computer/disk management' it won't allow it to be initialized and under the WD diagnostic tool 'S.M.A.R.T.' won't initiate.

I need the data off of here (files/images, etc), are there ANY home solutions to get my information back? Anything is appreciated. thanks
 
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Mattios

Mattios

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Jun 24, 2013
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I highly doubt it. Failure to read SMART data is a very bad sign.

There is a WD rep on the forums who'll be able to advise you further.

I suggest you look into professional data recovery if the files are important to you. Moral of the story: keep backups.
 
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Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

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Jul 31, 2014
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Hi Mike and welcome to the community.

Sorry to hear about the issues you're having with your drive. Did you have any problems with the HDD prior to this issue? Any unusual sounds/noises, low transfer speed etc?
I'd suggest that you try the drive with a different computer and a different USB cable (preferably shorter than 12"). If the same thing happens, I'd recommend that you try accessing the drive via Linux Live DVD/USB, to see if it's properly recognized and if you can get to your data, or try some of the data recovery options from this thread: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html
Unfortunately if you're not able to recover any data via any of those methods, what you're left with is a professional solutions, such as a data recovery company: WD Data Recovery Partners

Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD
 
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mikeinflorida

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Aug 18, 2015
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No such issues before. When I plug it in now, it might make a click every 30-40 seconds, but that is it. and when I feel it, it feels like everything is running normal/spinning on the inside.

Are there any home recovery options? even with professionals? And thanks.



 
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mikeinflorida

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Now here is something weird.

I have NEVER used my wife's Macbook before ( and I use windows 7, 8, 10, etc) and I have never plugged my ext hard drive into my wifes macbook before.

I just now did it to see what it would do, now it showed the folders but no data .. it wouldn't allow me to open it (was showing 0kb data) but it did correctly show all 8 or so folders I have in the hard drive.

Would it still show this even if the drive was dead? some sort of cache ... or is this an indication that the drive maybe ok to get data from?



 
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Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

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I can't tell for sure if you'll be able to recover your data by any of the suggested methods, but you could still try and hope you get lucky with one of them.
Even though you've never used the drive with your Mac before, I assume that it was formatted with the NTFS file system and the "read" function for this file system is natively supported by Mac OS X, that's probably why you can see some of the folders. Having this in mind, I'd still recommend that you try accessing the drive via Linux Live DVD/USB, to see if this OS will be able to read the whole data. For more data recovery options please refer to my previous post. Here's another link which might prove useful in your case: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/filerecovery/tp/free-file-recovery-programs.htm

Good luck!
 
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