Please, please, please can someone help me!
I have a 4 year old, Passport Ultra external hard drive… my life and ALL my work are on it and backed up to it!
Yesterday it was working fine, today I plug it in and I hear the inside working, I see the light flashing for about 30 secs (then solid state), it is recognised in my files, but there is no content within my folders and when I try to open one of my sub folders, it just freezes and comes up with the message “Device Not Ready”… I leave it but it does nothing else. Then occasionally, I can hear a ‘click’ inside after a bit, but nothing happens.
The light flashes occasionally, but I cannot open any of my files and this device has been my back up for everything…
I will lose all my proposals, projects, photos and footage for work… please can anyone help me?
I have bought a new 4TB Passport and I have tried the new cable in the old device to see if it was a connection issue, but the same thing happens. I have tried to change the file path in ‘devices’, this was on the back of a full days research online trying to find an answer, but nothing has worked so far!
Is there a way to recover my work, or is it gone forever… Please tell me its not!
Thanks in advance.
I don’t know of a way to get you into your data, but I just want to add that there’s always data recovery services.
Thank you and I have tried this but as it is saying the drive isn’t ready, it won’t allow any access to the data… I just get the message that the drive has been removed (when it hasn’t). It just tells me that the device isn’t ready when I plug it in.
Thank you for your response, I am really worried I won’t recover my work.
No, I mean data recovery companies. They disassemble the drives and use specialized techniques to recover the info onto a replacement drive.
Be careful with the last part of that article, as the suggestions starting with the DiskPart section may wipe out any data on the disk.
Before moving to data recovery services, you can try the bare hard drive on a USB HD adapter, unless it’s a USB-only drive, not a SATA drive with a USB adapter in the case. See this video for more info on opening the drive and what to look for:
If it’s a USB only drive, there are a few more options, increasingly technical, like finding an identical HD and swapping the drive board between them, in case it’s an electronic failure and not a HD failure.
Going forward, you’ll want to back up important data to at least 2 locations. Not helpful now, I know.
