Fatal Error on WD (Western Digital) External 2.5" HDD After Copying Some Files -- Drive is RAW

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Cyanide2x4

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Oct 20, 2011
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I have been using my Western Digital My Passport 1 Tb for about 2-3 years now. Today, I was copying some files on it, and suddenly the copy process stopped and showed that one particular file could not be copied due to an error, I skipped this file, then the same happened for the next file (the last file in the queue), and I skipped that one but then the copy task got completely stuck showing "1 day left", so I used the "pause" button in the copy window and then the copy window closed itself and then when I wanted to access the drive it showed a message; "Fatal Error" or something along those lines, that the drive cannot be accessed due to such error.

I unplugged the drive and plugged it back in, the drive was showing up as "Local Disk F" (instead of My Passport) but the bar showing how much of the disk is full and how much is empty was not at all showing up. I restarted the PC and plugged the drive back in and it was still the same story.. I checked the drive on my friend's laptop and it's got the same problem there too. Is there any way to deal with this problem easily or is this really a serious error and it would be the safest option to give the HDD to a data recovery company? I really have some extremely important recent files on this drive and I have no backup of them, in fact today I was planning to get a backup of those important files when this happened... What's the best thing to do?

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As you can see in the second screenshot, Disk Management shows that the entire disk is completely free... This has really made me concerned leading me to believe that all my data is gone..
 
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Ubrales

Ubrales

Polypheme
Dec 3, 2009
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Download and run "HDTune" as well as "CrystalDiskInfo" - then use these to check the external drive. Look for health and "Re-allocated sectors count raw value" - if this is >1 replace the drive. (I did see your results that you posted).

To recover data "RECUVA" is a good free tool.
 
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D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

Judicious
Jul 30, 2014
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Hi there Cyanide2x4,

Sorry that you are facing some issues with your WD drive. :(

Unfortunately, it seems that it has some bad sectors related issues.
Of course, your safest bet would be to contact a data recovery company. You can check WD's Data Recovery Partners out: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=06jBd5

Apart from that, as it seems that the drive is in a RAW state, you can try using some raw drive data recovery tools:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/280932-32-hard-drive-recovery

I believe you can try the one that Ubrales suggested as well.

Is the drive under warranty?

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD
 
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C

Cyanide2x4

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Oct 20, 2011
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I tried a myriad of different applications and approaches mentioned on many topics here on TomsHardware and also many other websites, and nothing solved the problem. I tried everything I could, from the smallest pieces of software to the known expensive ones and nothing could change my drive from RAW into normal state. The only thing that finally worked was a tool called ''MiniTool Power Data Recovery'' and the article below [1].

Strange thing is that this was also the only software that could show a list of my files still accessible on the drive without even turning the drive state from RAW to normal. So I was copying those files into my computer and afterwards a restart saved ALL of my files. I have no idea how it worked, but after opening the WD drive with this programme and navigating through the files and trying to 'rescue' the remaining files, I just simply restarted the computer and my drive was there intact with all of the files in place.


[1] https://www.powerdatarecovery.com/hard-drive-recovery/raw-disk-file-recovery.html
 
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