1TB Passport Essential USB 3.0 drive format NTSF, used on both Mac and Win7 machines.
Plugged into the Mac today, and get an error message after rapidly blinking light that drive is not recognized by this computer. No further action is possible unless we open disk utility in which case, Passport appears, but info shows disk as unformatted. The only option available is to erase or erase and repartition - This would be last resort. Repair and Verify options are grayed out. Using WD Smartware, running the checks, Quick Smart Status, the disk passes. In Quick Drive Test, the process hangs, or self cancels at 90%. Haven’t taken the time to run the full test, as it gets to 10% and doesn’t appear to want to go any further.
On the Windows machine, disk doesn’t show up in “My Computer,” but does show in device manager in control panel, and we are told that the drive is functioning normally. Opening WD Smartware on the Win machine, drive shows up as an unavailable backup target, but not as a source. It is identified as My Passport Essential with “No writable partitions found.”
The thing that offers us some hope is that we are getting some activity showing from the disk, by way of feeling the random, non-sequential movement inside, and seeing the irregularly blinking light. Downside is that since it doesn’t show up either in Finder (Mac) or My Computer (Win) we don’t know if any of the recovery software is capable of pulling any of the files off this disk.
As I understand it, a reformat, if possible would make possible a likely recovery of some of the data using a recovery program, since the entire disk isn’t overwritten by an erase, or reformat - Correct?
Open to ANY suggestions.
Thanks !!!