Drive shows full reformat necessary

I have a WD Mybook that (4TB) that was about half full. All of a sudden it shows full and requires a reformat. I cannot access the directory or any of the files. The warranty expired last month and the product replacement is not the concern, the files are! Is there any reasonable solution for the dilemma?

Hi @zookeeper1,

Please contact the WD Technical Support team for best assistance and troubleshooting:
https://support-en.wd.com/app/ask

Hope it helps!!

Well, it seems that your drive has become RAW, as when it turns to RAW, then only it shows several error messages like:

“Your USB drive is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?”

“You need to format USB drive before you can use it”

“Windows was unable to complete the format or USB drive cannot be formatted”

Although the error messages are different yet they have the same consequence, i.e. loss or inaccessibility of data. In such situations, it becomes extremely important to recover all of the valuable data.

Further, you can try any reliable data recovery tool such as Stellar Data Recovery, to recover data from RAW drive. You can also check the link below for further information regarding the issue:

Hope it helps!

Thank you for the response and the information. I am researching this option. Not being a computer tech some of the terminology doesn’t really register with me. I am guessing the the FAT table is damaged and there is no means for the drive to find the files. I am unclear as to what level this program can or will do this. Have you actually used this software before? Are the original file names and directories still intact?

Terry

You can try the Stellar data recovery free edition, that will allow you to scan the drive and see the files that can be recovered. If you are satisfied with the scan result then you can move ahead to purchase the software for unlimited recovery as the free edition of the software allows user to recover up to 1 GB data only. To know more about the free edition version you can check the link below:

Hope it helps!