WD external HD changes from NTFS to RAW - how to retrieve data?

I have a Passport 4TB external HD. I have used this drive and several other WD external drives without incident for several years. Upon connecting it today, it asked me for my password - as it ordinarily does - but instead of showing up under My Computer as 'My Passport G:', it shows up as 'Local Disk G:' and asks if I want to reformat it. So I went to diskmgmt.msc (see screen capture) and it says this sector is now RAW (note the sector on my other WD HD is NTFS). I contacted Western Digital about this and they said to attempt to retrieve the data using a third party tool M3 Data Recovery.

If M3 Data Recovery doesn't work, what other options might there be?

M3 Data Recovery looks like it will take a long time (22-23 hrs). Is there possibly a quicker way? Would XCopy work?

What might have been the cause of this?

Does anyone else here have any experience with issues like this? And what was the resolution?

You don't want data recovery it will take hours and may make things worse. Raw means it's lost partition table you need specific partition recovery software there are lots of free ones on Google once partition is recovered files will be there it shouldn't take very long to find it. If the data is vital do nothing and send to a data recovery firm

sorry for my bad english...

use any free cloning-tool (dd_rescue e.g.) to transfer data to a new drive

if disk doesn't respond or lags (copy time more than 24 hours) this is common wd firmware problem caused by bad sectors on the surface - only option for recovery is a pro ! i have 5-10 such cases per month.

regards

samuria said:

You don't want data recovery it will take hours and may make things worse. Raw means it's lost partition table you need specific partition recovery software there are lots of free ones on Google once partition is recovered files will be there it shouldn't take very long to find it. If the data is vital do nothing and send to a data recovery firm

Thanks for your post.
I'm a newbie to things like this, but it seems that partition recovery software such as Download EaseUS Partition Recovery and Free EaseUS Data Recovery does the same thing as using this Free data recovery software for Mac/Windows: M3 Data Recovery
Or am I wrong? If so, what's the difference between the two.

Try Partition Find and mount.
Partition Find and Mount free partition recovery software

There is slight difference you can scan specifically just for the partition table which shouldn't take long as it's at the front of the disk. Another way is to find files and trace back to partition table which can take forever. Both have benefits and if you search for partition recovery one software may not work but next works in mins