I lost all my data in My Passport Essential 500GB USB 3.0

Good day to all the WD Forum Community,

My problem is the next: I have lost all my pictures, documents, videos, music… Everything! From My Passport Essential 500GB USB 3.0 and 2.0. It is really frustrating because I have now nothing. About 400GB of DATA… And the things I want the most are my pictures and photos, those are priceless memories.

I am not sure what happened. One day I had all my data on my WD External Hard Disk Drive and the other day ALl the DATA WAS LOST. I do not what to do. I want my data back.

I have not formatted my WD again. SO I think still the data is in there.

Can somebody tell me if the warranty covers it? Or If the warranty covers the data recovery process?

I loved the moment I got the External Hard Disk Drive, but now I’m Regretting I bought this EHD.

Do you know if there is a number to call to? Or a way to solve this?

Big Disappointment from WD.

Thank you in advance!

Warranty does not cover data recovery.

You’re going to need to understand that *ALL* hard drives fail – if you don’t keep backups of important data, you WILL lose it at some point.

Tony is correct.  Data recovery is not included in the warranty.  However, can you still see your drive on Computer?  If not, does it show up in Disck Management?  If so, then you’ve most likely got corruption, or corrupted the file system.

But for the price I payed it does not suppossed to. We all have rights and if the driver fail well, its a factory or software problem, but what about my data ? So we buy product and pay not a cheap price and also we have to accept the data lost for probems. I does not seem right. What about baby pictures, wedding pictures, family albums ?

Who is going to be responsible for the lost ?

And TONYPH12345, about what you said realtive to backups? For what you think EHDDs are for ?

That’s why we buy them.

Two things: One, you must always remember that your data is your responsibility.  Not only that, but if you did something to corrupt the data on the drive, such as not safely remove the drive, that is not anyone else’s fault.  Two, if you don’t have your data in two seperate locations (i.e. two different drives, a drive and dvd, etc.), then you do not have a backup.  By definition, a backup means that it’s a copy of existing data.  To just move your data from your computer to an external hard drive is not backing it up.

[edit]

To add to this, and I don’t mean to be insensitive about your data, the price of a drive does not guarantee that something won’t happen to it to cause it to fail.  Usually, a higher price means your paying for some extra things.  But, at the end of the day, a drive is nothing more than a bit bucket, and you want to have as many as it takes to protect your data. 

On another note, you never answered my question, can you see the drive in Disk Management?  If so, you might consider searching online for a data recovery software that can restore partitions.  Cause if the drive is still spinning and you can reformat it, like you said, then it’s not the drive.  The drive hasn’t failed.

Bill, you are right about the owner reponsabilities. I must tell you that I am a IT student, and so I did not nothing to corrupt the disk. I didn’t even conect it to other computers for that reason. I neither erased anything. And I did not lost the data cause It fell. I have a USB HUB and I always removed the eHDD safely (I mean that i always payend attention to the amount of energy that goes thru the eHDD and to always remove it safely).

I can still see the disk on windows explorer, but the files are not there.I have tried to recover them but unsucessfully.

Like I told you, It just used one day and the next day It didnt has data.

Does this happen often? DOes has this happen to someone else ? What are your recommendations, what the warranty covers, Does Western Digital has any recovery program in this cases or do we have to pay the whole price of it?

400GB of data is to cry, seriously.

PD: I am not sure if you work for WD but saying that the price is not relevant and that ALL the HDD are the same, it is not good for your Company.  But Thank you for your honesty.

Hello Miguel_WD

The warranty agreement covers the replacement for your drive, if the drive is indeed defective we will gladly replace the drive as many times as necessary.

Unfortunately, WD does not have a data recovery software you can search online and you will be able to find several free options to perform data recovery.

Thank you Bill and Thank you NESVIC, I appreciate your comprehension.

Now I have a few questions: Does this happen often? Do other products have this problems?
I want to replace it, What are all the steps I have to take to request a Replacement for My PE 500GB (you called RMA)? Does WD send a Return Label ? How long I have to way until the process is done?

It is hard to lose all 400GB of your family pictures, and home videos and documents.

I want to replace the product because I dont want this to happen to my again for a defective problem on the hardware.

I definitely like WD products, but how frustrating to lose the data and pay to get it back. I was looking at prices and a recovery process cost more than 200 hundred US dollars. Two times more than the WD MPE 500GB itself.

What can i say? From now on I want to solve this matter and recovering my data.

Can you please help my out as much as you can to get replaced my hardware?

Thank you in advance!

Miguel,

If you can see the drive on Computer.  Safely remove it from the pc, disconnect it from the usb hub and connect it directly to one of the computer’s usb ports.  You may not be getting enough power through the hub to spin it up.  We do not recommend using our passports with usb hubs, even powered hubs may not supply enough power to the drive.

But the data is still lost.

Does the drive show up in Computer or Disk Management?  If so, then it’s entirely possible that the file system was corrupted along the way. 

Hello Everybody, I’ve the same issue with an EHDD 1TB, using it very safely, and suddenly i got lost all of my DATA,
The EHDD still appear in the Windows explorer but its not accessible.
Please try to support to get back the Data.

Finally i found a method to rebuild the MFT and to return the Lost Data by using 

" chkdsk /F : " 

Reference

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/176646