External hd help PLS!
 

Okay got a western digital 1tb note book. Usb connector broke on it no worries so i take the hd out of the case and put it in a external case that i baught from new egg. It doesnt show the drive it comes up like an internal hd wants me to intialize it and shows all unused space as unallocated but has 65 plus gigs unacounted for which is the info i want. Plus this wd drive had a program that always came up when i plug it in the pc called wd back up software or something like that and asks if i want to enter that program or just open to view files those never come up anmore when i plug the hd in the new case. I even tried just installing it as an internal with the sata cable and power cable. Anybody has an idea?

Did it come with any recovery software on disk? I might try booting from an ubuntu live cd just to poke around at it just for shits and giggles, but maybe wd uses a propritary partition and file system and needs their s/w to access it so that's a long shot.

Honestly I'd just call up western digital mate, chance are they can give you a quick, precise answer.

Yea i called them and some barely speaking english arab told me the hd was messed up im like bs no its not u guys have this damn adapter thing that doesnt utlilize the hd like a normal sata cable does. Its got chips resistors and all kinds of crap on it more than a simple sata to usb converter! Plus the orignal program on the disc arent even being utilized too.

One should not criticize others speaking ability, when one can not type a coherent sentence.

Initializing a drive will not cause it to lose data. Formatting a drive will. A windows format however is not really a low level format and is still recoverable with any data recovery software.

I like NTFS recover, it is not free, but it is cheap. The more expensive versions of recovery software will try and preserve filenames and folders. I can't recommend one off hand but google will point you to a software and there may even be free data recovery apps out now. (probably not though since it is a HUGE and over paid business).

The application that used to start when you plugged in via USB was triggered by the autoplay service in windows. Internal drives should not have this flaw, so the application would need to be manually triggered once the partition is viewable within windows.

No its just irratating when u have a simple problem like this and i have to go through all this hassel to get perfectly fine data back! I mean lets hire other people to do jobs cheaper and and spend hours on the phone to explain something. Plus this isnt my job nor am i getting paid to type a non coherent sentence!!!!

^ I agree, to an extent, its one thing to ship the jobs over seas but its another to hire no legible speaking folks at a phone support center!@

The pcb for those drives have a proprietary fw in it.

You will need a data recovery program like GetDataBack or something similar to get your data... Then just write zeros to the drive with the wd lifeguard tools.... :Hi:

I.....speak....perfectly.....good.....southern.... .drawl. :taunt:

Excellent point.

Cheaper to hire non native speakers though and have customers get frustrated and hang up and go buy a new product (even if it is a competitors though) than have to RMA lol.



Did you try what I suggested? Let/tell windows (to) initialize the drive and view the data? If it is still hidden, you can set windows to show hidden and protected files.

Open up any explorer window, hit alt, the bar that pops up select tools>folder options>view then check "show hidden files and folders", and uncheck, "hide protected operating system files"

If it STILL does not show the data. Check your programs menu, for Western digital and look for the software. If there is something listed try running the app, it should either tell you "no 'life book' (or whatever model EDD you have) detected" or it will function.

If there is no app listed under Western digital... go to their website and Download the software related to your external. And try that.

The fact that data is shown being used but is not visible... means..

A) it is a file system that Windows can use.
B) the data is hidden for some reason



Last thing to try.. open an elevated command prompt. Identify the new Disk drives letter (IE D:) and type the following

attrib -A -R -H D:

This will remove all read only, hidden and archive tags from the data on the drive (really jut R and H are needed I always use the trifecta though)

If it STILL does not show up. Run WD diagnostic utility freely downloadable from their website.

Well, if I don't concentrate on my caucasian accent, I probably sound like a bumbaling idiot to many. Whatever the case, I believe your passport operates on a smart software. I forget exactly how to do it but I can point you in the right direction.

What you'll need to do is pull up a file listing for the "x" (passport) drive, cmd prompt and figure out which virtual drive letter the software resides on and list the files.

dir /x (x is the virtual drive letter)

Locate the .exe file for the software and run it.