My Western Digital My passport showing RAW. How do I make it alive?

[liveondead]

Please help me. I have a 1 TB WD external hard drive. It is of my passport series. Its age is 5 years old. It was working fine, one day when browsing through it, the cable came loose. And then the problem has been persistent all of a sudden. When connected, if I open disk management, it says "you must initialize a disk..." But MBR and GPT both styles fails to initialize. In disk management, my disk in unknown, not initialized, unallocated. I dont care much about the data in there, but I want to make it working again. If possible, recovering data is best, but if not, losing data does not trouble me much.
I tried using MiniTool Partition Wizard but it is not much of help. It says (Bad Disk).
When i connect to pc, the sound beeps and I can feel the spinning sound from the hd. But its not shown in file explorer. Previously, when i connect my hd, it used to say "you must format the disk" and used to be visible in file explorer. But after i tried formatting(but with no gain), it is not visible in computer.
I will be posting all the screen shots.
Thanks in advance.

 

[CKWD]

Hello liveondead!

I'm sorry you're having a problem with your WD My Passport! :/

Still, 5 years is a long time! Which model of the My Passport series is this?

The I/O device error is a very serious one, including when another software is showing the drive as a Bad Disk and Disk Management – as Unallocated. You could try with another cable on both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0, see if you could clone the drive to try and recover the data later. Keep in mind that this could cause more damage to both the drive and the data!

Boot into a Linux/Ubuntu Live CD and see if the drive is active there.

Try to reformat through diskpart:

1. Open the Start Menu, type diskpart, press Enter
2. Type list disk, press Enter
3. Type select disk X (where X is the number the certain drive), press Enter
4. Type clean, press Enter
5. Type create partition primary, press Enter
6. Type format quick fs=ntfs, press Enter
7. Type assign letter=X, press Enter
8. Type exit, press Enter

This will delete all data off the drive but it could help making it active again.

If nothing works, the drive is just too far gone and most certainly is out of warranty (5 years old). :/

Best of luck and post back!

CK_WD

 

[jumanji]

@CKWD, I am just wondering why you are not suggesting checking the drive status with Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows? Any reason?

 

[liveondead]

Progess till now 0

I have done diskpart and diagnostics. Both with no luck. I will post the screenshots.

 

[CKWD]

Hi Jumanji!

Yes, there is a reason. It did cross my mind, of course, but considering the I/O error OP is receiving,
the drive's status in Disk Management suggesting file system error and the fact that performing a health check, in this case with the DLG, could damage the situation more. OP wants to use the drive, I would like to see if it can be reformatted and allocated through the average channels, afterwards we will act considering the results, and most likely a health check with DLG.

CK_WD

EDIT: Now I see OP has answered but I am already off for the day and will be back in a few hours!

 

[CKWD]

Scratch that last one. I couldn't leave before answering OP..

As I suspected the drive has failed, I was going to suggest the DLG after all is done from my first post, but it's fine that you did it anyways. At this point if you would like your data back, you will have to recover it either using a software or professional services. The latter is more likely at this point, as the drive seems to be too damaged to handle data recovery in home environment. Otherwise WD has data recovery partners: Support Answers.

If you are not interested in data recovery you could try and RMA the device if it is still under warranty:

WD Warranty check:
Support Answers

WD Warranty Policy:
Support Answers

Hope you manage to replace the drive!

Otherwise, if anyone else has better advice, I'm sure it will be posted here.

CK_WD

 

[liveondead]

I also used ubuntu live cd to check. All other pendrives and hard disk can be mounted but when I plug my WD hd, it does nothing. Nothing comes up. Really frausted with my problem.
I dont have any warranty since it is old.
So does that mean, is it over? Is my external hardisk gone? Won't I be able to use it anymore??
Please please help.

 

[CKWD]

I'm afraid it looks like you won't be able to use it any more. :/

It seems to have severe damage. The DLG reports too many bad sectors. Once they occur and malfunction the device, that's pretty much it.

How old is the drive, did you check if its really out of warranty?

If your data is available for recovery then it could be done by professional in the best case, as the device at this point emits too any errors and is unrecognizable even in DLG. :/

Best of luck!

CK_WD