Data Recovery

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

Hello Together,
Is it possible to recover data from My passport external wired HDD considering as it is not working.
Also I have not synced it to the WD cloud.

So in this case is it possible to recover data?
I have warranty further for one more year.

Since it was working fine till two days back. No external damages too.
Suddenly today drive is not visible in PC. So I have done the RMA process.

So kindly help me.

2

Hi @Mohan_baabu,

This issue can be caused by some of the following reasons:

  • If the drive has failed or is failing.

  • Cable connections may have come loose.

  • The partition has become corrupted

Please refer to the following article for troubleshooting steps as the drive is not getting detected:

Title: Windows or macOS Cannot Find My Drive
Link: Cannot Find My WD Drive on Windows or macOS

Western Digital does neither cover Data Recovery under its warranty policy nor has any in-house data recovery service.

Title: Alternate 3rd Party Data Recovery Options
Link: Third Party Data Recovery Software Options for Windows and macOS

3

There might be chances that your hard drive is failing, mainly HDD failure happen due to the bad power supply, virus attack, damaged block, sectors and corrupted operating system. Here, I suggest you to check out the below link that explains all the measures to check the health of any hard disk:

Further, if you wish to recover data from that particular hard drive which is having some issues, then I suggest you to check out the below link that helps you to recover data from corrupt on unresponsive drive:

Hope it will help.

4

The internal parts of the drive, such as the controller board or the disk itself, might be having issues. Alternatively, there can be issues with the drive’s connectivity or compatibility with your PC. Since you said that the drive is still under warranty and you’ve started the RMA process, then I would recommend you wait. Data recovery may still be possible, depending on the severity of the situation. You could opt to look into using professional data recovery software if you still need to retrieve your data.

5

I would like to first address that RMA will lead to return and replacement and not the data recovery part, if your priority is data recovery then RMA process will not be helpful, however you can try a few thing before going for professional recovery software or service:

  1. Ensure that the connections between your external HDD and your PC are secure. Try using different USB ports or cables to rule out any connectivity issues. Try connecting your external HDD to another computer to see if it’s recognized there.
  2. Run Disk management utility because sometimes, the drive might not appear in File Explorer but can be detected in Disk Management. Right-click on “This PC” or “My Computer,” select “Manage,” then navigate to “Disk Management” to see if your external HDD is listed there. If it is, it might need to be initialized or assigned a drive letter.
  3. If the drive is still not recognized then go for data recovery software first, the few names in data recovery world are Stellar Data Recovery Software, Easeus, Recuva etc. These software have a free version, if in the free edition your data is scanned then there are chances that it can be recovered and if in the scanning process your data is not shown then you can go for professional recovery services, which is expensive but the recovery chances are more.