WD My Pssport not showing up

Hello jen24!

I am sorry for your problem!

From the title and screenshot I understand you have a WD My Passport that is recognized in Disk Management under Disk 1 Unknown, it isn't recognized in My Computer, it is probably prompting you to be Initialized and giving out an I/O error.

Which My Passport model is this? What led to this, did something happen, like unplugging while transferring data?

This is usually an error because of a partition table corruption, file system corruption or corrupted files on that disk.

You could try using a new USB cable and type in cmd the command sfc /scannow, here's some more information on it from the Microsoft Support page:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...?wa=wsignin1.0

Also, you could try fixing the master boot record, if the drive was initialized in MBR, this sevenforums tutorial would show you how:

MBR - Restore Windows 7 Master Boot Record

For now, do these and post back with results and additional info, so we'd know how to proceed further. :)
CK_WD

This is for my costumer. I thought it was just a minor virus glitch. When plugged in, it prompted me to reformat it. Since, the hdd is unusable in either way, I formatted it. Then suddenly it says, format is not completed or something like that. Then it became RAW. From his story, it suddenly became like that.

UPDATE: My costumer told me they encountered a virus before it happened.
UPDATE: Now, I ran chkdsk, it disappeared again from My Computer

The RAW format basically means it is a filesystem that is not recognized by the OS. The available filesystem drivers are unable to mount the filesystem as a drive. This could occur when the certain system files or registry entries for the drive's location and mounting are damaged or corrupted, usually the partition table or the boot sector. But Windows doesn't see a file system thus it wants you to probably reformat.

If you have already reformatted, all data that has been on the drive is lost. Usually, a new format would be the solution to this problem, though.

If there had been any data that you or your customer initially wanted from that drive, it's long gone after the reformat. And if this is the case, then the only thing left to do is to try and have the drive working again. You could try again reformatting and Initializing. You could check under Device Manager if the drive is shown there, if it is try and Uninstall it, disconnect it, reconnect it and see if it will automatically be shown again and how. Use a new cable.

Another way to know if the drive can be usable again would be to run SMART on it to determine what the errors are. For instance, if there are too many reallocated sectors, the HDD may not be able to be repaired.

A last option would be to write full zeros to the drive, which would do that to every bit of the disk and would practically return the drive as much to its default factory state as possible. You could do that with the WD Data Lifeguard Support.

WD DLG:
Support Answers

Post back with results! Good luck! :)

CK_WD

I am sorry it happened like this. This error is most often fixable with a full erase, reformatting or writing zeros to the drive and reinitializing. Sometimes this is due to a physical error of the disks and thus can't even be fixed, and the only way possible to know for sure is to take the drive to a professional to be opened in a clean room.

I wish you and your client best of luck!

CK_WD