# WD My Passport problem ...



## dheerajpant (Apr 23, 2013)

Hi all,

I have a 1TB WD My passport, I brought it about 2.5 yrs ago.
It had about 800 GB of data(mainly TV Series, Movies and Games... I almost had a heart attack  ), one day I plugged it into the system,, first it didn't detected the drive than after 2-3 tries it detected it but whenever I tried to access any folder the hddd became non-responsive, I tried this on various occasions In the hope of recovering some data). But finally after about 3 weeks I raised a request of replacement to WD, So when I was about to give the hdd to their service center I thought of formatting it so that any personal files would be removed, to my utter amazement it got formatted without any issues and now it seems to be working fine, but now I don't have any faith on that hard disk and if I return it to WD they will simply say that it is working...
So, does any one of you have faced any such issue that you might have lost the entire data(~800GB) but at the end it seemed that the hdd is fine?? Please share any suggestion if you have.

Thanks 

PS: I tried a recovery software firstly it checked the hdd's health and said it was fine... but the files it recovered were all corrupted.


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## whitestar_999 (Apr 24, 2013)

i suggest installing & learning how to interpret hdd S.M.A.R.T. values using software like crystaldisk info.when trying to recover data most basic rule is never to write anything on hdd so no running tools like chkdsk in fix mode.also many portable hdd may suffer from insufficient power through usb port so always use a Y-usb cable & on desktop always use back usb ports(not the front ones).


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## harshilsharma63 (Apr 25, 2013)

Tell the RMA guys about your issue and that it's not reliable to be used. try testing with some utility provided by WD.


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## TheHumanBot (Apr 25, 2013)

Stellar or Stella recovery softwares seems to be working fine for me.
many occasions i have recovered over 900GB+ data at GEB office and same WD black version HDD without any problem.


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## insaneYLN (Apr 27, 2013)

whitestar_999 said:


> ost basic rule is never to write anything on hdd so no running tools like chkdsk in fix mode.



*whitestar_999*, what do you mean by this?


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## nginx (Apr 27, 2013)

whitestar_999 said:


> i suggest installing & learning how to interpret hdd S.M.A.R.T. values using software like crystaldisk info.when trying to recover data most basic rule is never to write anything on hdd so no running tools like chkdsk in fix mode.also many portable hdd may suffer from insufficient power through usb port so always use a Y-usb cable & on desktop always use back usb ports(not the front ones).



Its not advisable to run chkdsk only when you have deleted data and are trying to recover it using recovery tools. For a hard drive that Windows is having a hard time detecting or working with, its always advisable to run chkdsk to see if any file system level corruptions can be corrected or may be some bad sectors can be remapped. Debian has saved my ass a ton of times thanks to its brilliant fsck command.

And yes, always check S.M.A.R.T stats first when it comes to any HDD issue. If only OP had posted this thread before he took the drastic action of formatting, we could have suggested him various measures to get the data back. Oh well best thing to do now and get the drive replaced under warranty.

Btw if you value your data, please keep backups in failure. It's not a question of if hard drives will fail but when.


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