Help! I inadvertantly might have messed up my external hard drive

[Birddude007]

Hey folks I have one of those WD My Book external hard drives that I have been basically using as a storage device for all my images and other essential items I need.
Somewhere along the way I must have done something wrong. Now when I have it connected to my laptop it only shows that it is showing as "CD Drive (I; ) WD Smartware" and at only one gigabyte, this is a 1 TB hard drive. I cannot get the computer to access the rest of the HD, it just shows it as an unrecognisable partition.
is there any thing out there I can use so that I can force the computer to access the rest of this hardrive?
Hopefully I have explained this right. The hard drive used to just be the I drive where I have stored tons of photos and other crucial information that I need to recover. I am thinking of just taking it into some computer guru locally to get all that info back, but I first want to know If I can take care of it myself.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

I have two 2tb My Books and I find that one of them has to be unplugged and reconnected to be seen. Have you pulled the usb and reconnected and see what the lappy does. You can also power it totally down and power back up then report what your laptop does and see's.
Also what is it's exact model and model number?

 

[AC]

Open disk management (Start-Right Click Computer-Manage-Disk Management), right click the drive you are having trouble with, click change drive letter and paths, remove it, then right click it again, Drive Letter and Paths, and add it. Just click OK in the box.

 

[patio]

Sounds to me like you have the WD software DVD in your DVD drive...

 

[Birddude007]

Open disk management (Start-Right Click Computer-Manage-Disk Management), right click the drive you are having trouble with, click change drive letter and paths, remove it, then right click it again, Drive Letter and Paths, and add it. Just click OK in the box.

I did that and and when I try to open the drive, it wants to reformat in order for me to use it

 

[Birddude007]

Sounds to me like you have the WD software DVD in your DVD drive...

No, it is not in the drive, I somehow or another managed to make it so that it always comes up like that....I know absolutely nothing about computers,

 

[AC]

Open disk management (Start-Right Click Computer-Manage-Disk Management), right click the drive you are having trouble with, click change drive letter and paths, remove it, then right click it again, Drive Letter and Paths, and add it. Just click OK in the box.

I did that and and when I try to open the drive, it wants to reformat in order for me to use it

Oooh. I think something is wrong with the HD and you might have to format it in order to use it. I had the same thing happen to me with an SD card. Can you post a screenshot of the error your getting?

File and data recovery software to unformat, undelete files. Recover deleted files and recover formatted disk or corrupt drives - EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-screenshots-files-upload-post-seven-forums.html

 

[Birddude007]

Here ya go-

 

[AC]

Are there any drivers or software disks for it? You're gonna have to try some data recovery like the Easeus link in my post above yours, or take it to a local computer shop if not.

 

[Birddude007]

Are there any drivers or software disks for it? You're gonna have to try some data recovery like the Easeus link in my post above yours, or take it to a local computer shop if not.

I am doing that right now and it is actually the first software that I tried that is actually scanning the drive, I will let you know the outcome.

PS: By the way- GO Jr! he really needs to get up on that wheel to get that championship, I have seen some serious improvement with him this year, hope he gets the Cup

 

[Birddude007]

So far it is finding all the folders.....kinda happy about that

 

[gregrocker]

What's showing up in Explorer is likely only the crapware which comes preinstalled on the HD which in most cases can be wiped off the HD with Diskpart Clean Command so it doesn't interfere. However for MyBook WD recommends: How to remove (disable / hide) the Virtual CD (VCD) for Windows or Mac OSX on a WD My Book or WD My Passport

When an external doesn't show up correctly in Explorer, I try to run a Disk Check on it and if that doesn't see it often times Partition Wizard's Check File System function will bring it back to life. How to Check File System? Partition Wizard Video Help. This may work since data Recovery sees your data.

There is also Partition Wizard Partition Recovery Wizard - Video Help which may be able to recover the entire missing data partition on the HD.

 

[jumanji]

IMO, neither Windows nor any other conventional partition/formatting utility is going to touch the 700MB VCD partition which is in the UDF format as per your screenshot.( These may deal with the rest of the WD HDD.)

Do put in a screenshot of how your Western Digital HDD presents itself in the Disk Management.

Then we can try to decipher ways and means of getting it annihilated.

 

[Birddude007]

What's showing up in Explorer is likely only the crapware which comes preinstalled on the HD which is best deleted or wiped off the HD with Diskpart Clean Command so it doesn't interfere.

When an external doesn't show up correctly in Explorer, I try to run a Disk Check on it and if that doesn't see it often times Partition Wizard's Check File System function will bring it back to life. How to Check File System? Partition Wizard Video Help.

This is especially likely to work since data Recovery sees your data.

Thanks for that info, for now I am gonna let Ease US Data Recovery tool do its job, I have never been able to take that other crapware off of that hard drive and because of that, it has been a constant pain in my arse. After I get all my nfo recovered I will try that software to remove that crapware.

 

[gregrocker]

This seems to do the job the best and since it's from WD would preserve any warranty: How to remove (disable / hide) the Virtual CD (VCD) for Windows or Mac OSX on a WD My Book or WD My Passport

There is a long thread with complaints and various attempts here: How do I remove this smartware software from my dr... - Western Digital Community

 

[Birddude007]

This seems to do the job the best and since it's from WD would preserve any warranty: How to remove (disable / hide) the Virtual CD (VCD) for Windows or Mac OSX on a WD My Book or WD My Passport

There is a long thread with complaints and various attempts here: How do I remove this smartware software from my dr... - Western Digital Community

OH Cool! Thanks for that info, I will definitely check that out!

 

[jumanji]

The relevant questions here are:

1. Have you installed the Smartware and using it to backup your system?

2. Do you need the VCD feature that does the Hardware encryption or locking and unlocking the drive?

WD SmartWare FAQ - Western Digital Community

If you are not using the Smartware and the VCD enabled lock-unlock, just to hide the VCD, you will be installing another bit of garbageware " WD Smartware Virtual CD Manager"

As far as Smartware is concerned it has been rightly termed 'garbageware" by thousands of users expressing anger and agony in many threads in the WD community forum - including their latest version 1.6.2.

To thousands of users asking WD on how to remove the VCD, this is the reply:

"You buy a lockable drive and it comes with the necessities for locking and unlocking it; you buy a plain drive and you get a plain drive. Seems straight-forward.

As WD has repeatedly said, the VCDs will not be being removed from the lockables any time in the forseeable future -- that's why they sell the other lines of drives. And even if they did happen to remove them from future drives, that still won't change the one you've bought. It was built as being lockable. And so it shall remain, whether you hide the VCD"

An exasperated user commented:

"I started this thread. I was hoping for a solution, and you have it.

Just stop buying WD, and sell the one you have. I did and have no more problems with the VCD.I removed the VCD from my computer by unplugging the drive and selling it. I now steer clear of any WD product."

Now it is your drive - your concern - Try killing VCD once for all and use it as a plain drive to be used as any other external HDD or hide the pest and close your eyes to it.

( Not that I am a WD-basher. One of my Media Centers runs on WD drives in RAID 0. But now I go with Seagate only for externals.)

 

[Birddude007]

Well folks....I used EaseUS data recovery and it has located all my files and is now asking where to recover the files to, the only place I have with enough room IS the hard drive that I am recovering from!, but when I point it to the hard drive it has a window pop up asking to reformat it. Do I throw the dice and risk erasing the information that I am trying to recover by reformatting the hard drive that it is sitting on or do I just leave the program open and go buy a new external HD?
Or should I try to find an online storage site? if so then which one is a good one? is there any that do a trial period?

 

[AC]

Well folks....I used EaseUS data recovery and it has located all my files and is now asking where to recover the files to, the only place I have with enough room IS the hard drive that I am recovering from!, but when I point it to the hard drive it has a window pop up asking to reformat it. Do I throw the dice and risk erasing the information that I am trying to recover by reformatting the hard drive that it is sitting on or do I just leave the program open and go buy a new external HD?
Or should I try to find an online storage site? if so then which one is a good one? is there any that do a trial period?

Dropbox gives you 5 GB of storage free I believe, and SkyDrive gives you 7 GB per account I think.

 

[gregrocker]

Did you ever try my suggestion to run Partition Wizard Partition Recovery Wizard - Video Help which very reliably will recover an entire deleted or missing partition to the same HD if it hasn't been partitioned over?

If you instead now feel stuck having started out with the last-resort data recovery with an app that is not recommended here, I would borrow another external HD unless you have a stable network which will reliably transfer files to another PC. I would not attempt to save the files to the same HD.