WD My Passport 4tb drive problem

Hello,
I bought a 4tb WD my passport external hard drive last year (after buying 1tb my passport ultra) to store all of my data in it.
All my data stays in my 4tb WD hard drive now, but even after taking extra care for my hard drive it suddenly stops working on my pc, I performed chkdsk but too many bad sectors and unreadable data segments and then I tried wd Official tool but too many bad sectors error shown to me which not fixed my drive at all and after talking with WD customer support I get to know that WD don’t take responsibility for my data in their drive even after My Drive still have very healthy warranty left.

After seeking no other option, I filed RMA but I still want my data back and 3rd party recover is too expensive to afford right now, Is there any way I can get all my memories, my projects, my data back to me?

I dunno why you filed an RMA if you want your data back ?

RMA means Return Merchandise Authorization … so, if you return it to WD for replacement then your data is 100% gone for good.

A Data Recovery Service is the only option. Start saving.

(and keep a backup of your important data next time.)

This WD Har drive was supposed to be a backup device for all of my data, and 99% of the important data have no other copy what so ever, Hard drive data recovery is costlier than the hard drive itself, What is the point of buying WD products now !? Should I buy to waste more money and my precious time on it (No offense) Just my feelings of this so-called “Designed to protect your data.” company.

I still have 2 years of warranty,

To clear your question: I filed RMA because if I do or don’t get my data at least I can get a reusable piece of hardware instead of throwing hard-earned money that way.

I am already feeling very uncomfortable with this WD hard drive, Sooner or later I might write an article to represent my feeling with WD product and if things go too far which I am expecting that it can just happen then i may take a more effective step.

I had the same thing with a hard drive does it ever show on your PC if so you could try recuva by piriform i managed to recover quite a few files via it although it took many hours.

thank you for this suggestion @sherrjo but the problem in past with Recuva was that it doesn’t retrieve the folder tree instead of just random files with random names. Is it still the same ?

If the 4TB My Passport had all your “Important Data” on it … then you should have made a backup copy onto a another 4TB Hard drive.

That’s what a “Backup” is … a copy of the data on multiple hard drives in case one fails.

I have duplicate hard drives for every single one i own … eg. 2x4TB, 2x3TB, 2x2TB and every second hard drive is a backup of the first. A little bit expensive to buy 2 of everything … but significantly cheaper than data recovery services.

good idea though, I will consider it in future, thank you @JoeySmyth but still i need to recover my data for now.

if the drive can’t be recognized by your PC and/or is unreadable due to too many bad sectors … then no data recovery software will help you to recover the data.

Data Recovery Service is the only option i’m afraid.

@JoeySmyth yes but my drive is recognized by pc and i think too many bad sectors are logical only because i take good care of my equipment, Do you think if i format the drive and then use the recovery software ? I tried some good freeware tools but they took too much time and recover 0.001% after keeping them on for a day and the data is poorly labeled and not recognized easily, randomly recovered. For example R-undelete freeware version took whole day and barely scanned 6 mb in 1 tb of data in 4tb hdd.

Q1: So you think if i format the drive and then use some recover software then the data recovery speed might increase? The current state of hdd is that when i plug then it shows the label of the Hdd but the volume details and opening the hdd is not possible.

Q2: Also in the process i have some work to do so there is a good chance that i might miss the RMA last date, Can i re register the RMA when i think i am ready to return it and i have my data saved ?

Can’t offer anymore advice to what i’ve said. A Data Recovery Service is your BEST chance to get your data back.

Be aware if you are attempting to use data recovery software …you need another Hard Drive to recover the Data to (you cannot recover the data to the same hard drive)

So if you have 2TB’s worth of data to recover … you need to have another 2TB hard drive to recover the data to.

Oh, and yes … data recovery of a 4TB HDD will probably take a few or several days. (i did data recovery on a 1TB years ago … i think it took between 8 ~ 12 hours to complete)

Thank you for your advice @JoeySmyth you helping lot, By the way which tool you used ?
I do have another 1tb hdd and data is 1tb as well so i think i can do that :slight_smile:

and if you know any solution regarding unreadable data segments with chkdsk, please let me know that too and the tool you used to recover data.