Help, I unsafely removed My Passport Essential

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

In a senior moment, needing a USB port for something else, I unplugged My Passport Essential 320!  Old files are still there, but not renewing.  I’d like to start over.  If I reformat, will it start by itself, or what will I have to do?  Must I reformat?  Thanks for any help!

Win XP Home

2

I did the same thing and now it is saying I have a corrupted file… I would like to know how to fix it too. It keeps asking me to reformat it. Will I loose the data that I have on there or will I loose it. Please can someone help us.

3

nothing like this ever happened to me…

i always unplug my passport without removing it safely…

4

Strange if it is only a problem for some of us.  I can see that there are files there, but not the newest documents.  The icon is gone from the tray.  Things ain’t s’posed to be this way, I think. 

Help?

5

Today I was seeing if I could fix it and I got a pop up that told me something was wrong and they would fix it. So I put a check mark next to the fix files, and hit ok. Well now if I look on my hard drive I am missing files but when I look at how much space I have left on it, it still shows that I have files on there… Argg I need those files. I cant find them… Is there someone out there who can help us. I have or had court doc’s on this thing… Now I cant find them. So frustrating.

6

It is always recommended that you safely eject a device before unplugging it. If Windows or some program is using the drive when it is unplugged without safely removing it, it can damage the partition and/or files. When you have a drive that shows space is being used but you don’t see the files on the device, then you most likely have a damaged partition and need to use some type of data recovery software to see if it can find and recover the files for you. If you have a file that is damaged, you can try running checkdisk/scandisk in Windows to see if it can be repaired or you may need to have data recovery or a file repair utility try to repair the file.

7

Thanks anyway, but it is not a matter of a file.  The MY PASSPORT used to update itself with backups and it doesn’t anymore because I unsafely removed it, then formatted it.  It needs its original software, I suspect.  But I haven’t been able to successfully download and install said software.  Still need advice.