Dear WD Community,
I have a My Passport 4 TB acquired one year ago. It is used as a backup drive, not very frequently. Yesterday I was transferring files from another My Passport (older) to this one and during the transfer I got an error message saying that the file location could not be found (I do not remember the precise error message). I properly ejected both HD and connected them again. The older one was showing up correctly, but the 4 TB one did not appear anymore on Explorer.
I searched this forum and other sources to get help, but am unsure of how to procceed. Some checks I did:
- WD Drive Utilities: quick check ok, full check does not complete
- Disk Management: disk appears as Unknown, Not initialized, Not allocated, but shows correct size
- Tried changing cables, USB ports, connecting to other computers (Windows 7, mine is 10), without success
If I understood well, in order to use it again, I will need to initialize it. But before that I need to recover my data somehow. My questions are:
a) Is there another way to “fix” it without having to initialize it?
b) Do you recommend any free software to recover data? I saw EaseUS that allows only 500 MB/2 GB free recovery…do you know any other with higher amount of data by chance?
c) Does WD provide any sort of support to that data recovery? In my case there was no user fault - no mechanical shock, but rather a device failure.
I appreciate any comment/advice.
Regards,
Leonardo
