I have '1 TB Western Digital My Passport' External Hard Disk which is approx 1 year old(which was in good condition). Today,when I was transferring my data from the disk I accidentally removed the USB connecting cable. Afterwards when I connected the cable the disk was detected by Windows 8 but it showed blank drive in My Computer. The disk's properties are correctly shown in Device Manger. Disk Management window crashes when I open it & whenever I open My Computer, my laptop freezes & even some applications are getting hanged(this all happens only when the WD disk is connected).
My Computer gives 'Device not accessible' and 'I/O parameter error'.

I tried HDD Regenerater but no success
I even tried CHKDSK with 'f' and 'r' commands but they gave 'Can't determine Volume sector/stats.CHKDSK aborted'.

Is my disk busted? How should I fix this? and will my data be recoverable(damn valuable data)?

Please reply and answer ASAP

Thanks in advance

 

Hey AviatOfficial,

Sorry to hear that, unfortunately there is one solution, that may save the disk but not the Data.

I recommend that you plug your hard drive to a mac, then Go to utility, Pick Disk Utility, Then Select your Hard Drive, Do a full hard drive wipe, select the basic option "one time bla bla bla" can't remember the option's name atm and then choose FAT for now or if you or your friend's mac have NTFS App for mac then choose NTFS, do it, this will take time, if it finish without any error you're lucky if not sorry to hear that.

This may help you get your hard drive back, but not the Data!
so be careful.

i'm sure of one thing allot of sectors got damaged, Windows can fix that later but ignoring them.

Good luck tho and hope you can fix it!

 

Use Testdisk, apparently the MFT has been corrupted somehow *yes*

 

Did you restart the computer? Try to restart with the HD connected, and without. Try safe mode? Did you try to connect the HD to another computer? I had a similar incident once, I plugged in the HD in another computer and the HD worked again after that (also a 1TB WD).

 

before reformatting drive, see "Repair An NTFS MFT"

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Advanced_NTFS_Boot_and_MFT_Repair

 

SirSillySausage, he said when he plugs in the drive the PC slow down and freezes, i had a similar problem with 2 of my hard drives, one i could repair, and i'm using it atm, but i had to take like 40gb from the drive, as a no formatted partition, so the hard drive can work with no problems, the second tried the same steps, but it is really dead. ( miss you my lovely hard drive RIP ) i actually have a collection of all my failing hard drives, love em so much

anyway, what i wrote up there was my personal advice, i tried it, it works, maybe there is a better solution out there who knows, as i said good luck bdy! it's a painful feeling when you loose a hard drive.

 

Win8 I believe is the culprit here. A new feature of Win8 is faster switch off and start up times. However, what Win8 is actually doing is NOT powering down the HDD(s) when you turn off the machine. Any error with power (USB uses a 5V line) with the HDD will cause this type of error, it corrupts the MFT (Master File Table)

Loading up linux and checking the HDD should confirm this, Linux will report the drive is in an "unsafe state"

if the MFT cannot be repaired, it's a re-format job

 

How can Win8 control such thing? It's BIOS/CMOS who's in charge of power distribution. *no*
Win8 is just the invisible/weightless magnetic field on one's HDD

Unless it's UEFI/SecureBoot, then it's possible, as long as it's physically connected to the grid

 

pulling the cable out will surely affect the power supply to the hdd?

its part of the new power saving settings with win8, I suffered exactly this problem and I had to re-format, the hdds are put in a pause state by win8 when shutting down, disrupting the power supply will cause the hdd to become unreadable

 

Thanks for the fast reply guys.
And yes the MFT has been corrupted.Going to replace the disk from WD Service Centre later this week.
For the good news I had backed-up my disk last week!(Just found it!) :dancing:

Once again thanks!

 

Thanks for the fast reply guys.
Unfortunately I(and even my friends) don't have any MAC.
As the other members said the disk's MFT has been corrupted.Going to replace the disk from WD Service Centre later this week.
For the good news I had backed-up my disk last week!(Just found it!) :dancing:

Once again thanks!

 

Thanks for the fast reply guys.
I tried restarting PC with HDD and also in safe mode but no luck.
And as the other members said the MFT has been corrupted(thanks to Windows ).Going to replace the disk from WD Service Centre later this week.
For the good news I had backed-up my disk last week!(Just found it!) :dancing:

Once again thanks!

 

Thanks for the fast reply guys.
I tried that too but didn't mention in here but no success.Anyways I am Going to replace the disk from WD Service Centre later this week.
For the good news I had backed-up my disk last week!(Just found it!) :dancing:

Once again thanks!

 

Thanks for the fast reply guys.
You really got lucky for saving one of your HDD.I had no luck tho .Anyways Going to replace the disk from WD Service Centre later this week.
For the good news I had backed-up my disk last week!(Just found it!) :dancing:

Once again thanks!

 

Thanks for the fast reply guys.
And yes Windows is the culprit here.But I really want to stick to Win OS for gaming and stuff.Anyways as you said MFT has been corrupted.Formatting the drive is not even a option because my Laptop crashes everytime I plug in HDD.But anyways I'm Going to replace the disk from WD Service Centre later this week.
For the good news I had backed-up my disk last week!(Just found it!) :dancing:

Once again thanks!

 

AviatOfficial.
Been in your situation several times. If you really need your data back, the quickest and most reliable way is to use ”Parted Magic”. Don’t let the name fool you – the software is amazing.
Buy it or find it on some torrentsite. Put it on a CD or USB and boot your machine. You’ll be able to see your faulty external hdd and any other hdd on the system. Copy and save your data.
You don’t have to take my word for it, but I’ve tried all other rescue programs on the market. None comes even close, they all have shortcomings that make data-saving so convoluted and/or fail.
Good luck!

 

Check if you can browse the drive in Win Rar. Try the latest version of it along with an old version of it. If you can see the drive contents then use Recuva and restore.

If the drive contents are completely invisible then use "quick format" and then run Recuva - do not change File System or Allocation Size nor Drive Name. Most of the data will still be intact.

If the above two things are not possible do what I did. I used Linux in a dual-boot PC and then Googled something like this - " restore external hdd in linux "

 

Thanks for the reply.
I tried Recuva but no luck there.Every repair and recovery software crashes whenever I target the HDD.I will try the Linux method but anyways I'm going to replace the disk via WD service centre.
For the good news I had backed up the data last week(i just found it!)

 

Thats very awful
Perhaps you would like to read this thread. That is my experience.
http://audiosex.pro/index.php?/topic/14818-lost-data-western-digital-hd-drive-help/

It s a different problem but on there ppl list several options, I took macrium after having a go with Ddrescue.

 

HDD Regenerator is a program that is meant for a different purpose. Actually, my advice is to erase it and never download and use again since I think you don't know what it does. It should be the last resort anyway.

Why am I saying this? Because if you did that first you probably screwed your HD completely yourself with this tool, aside from disconnecting the USB cable while there's data transfer in progress. I know, I know... we've all been there at some point and huge majority of people stay there with their computer knowledge. I've been there a few centuries ago, and moved the fuck on, though.

You did good with trying to fix it with the chkdsk -f but too late. You should have done that first, and from *other OS*, or another computer. However, you could try this: download Hiren's Boot CD: http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/ Then boot into "mini XP" from it, and start chkdsk -f from there. That way you could possibly save your data. If that doesn't work, format it from this "mini XP" and the drive will be OK but you'll lose the data.

Don't ask me why it worked. I have to sleep. I just accidentally stumbled upon this thread... because I'm kinda sleepwalking.

Sidenote: WD My Passport drives I would only recommend to my enemy. WD drives are great, but these external plastic crap cases are - crap. Buy an external case and an external drive separately, always, if you care about your data and your wallet. Also, if you did that in Linux, nothing would happen, go figure. Or in the worst case you would just do "fschk" from the same Linux installation and repair it. Actually Linux with ext4 file system would do it for you automatically... at least my Debian 7.7 does it. That's how a real OS does it.

Best of luck!

Cheers !