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Question

WD My Passport Essential External HD Not Working

Mar 18, 2012 11:51AM PDT

My WD My Passport Essential External HD has been working fine for the last 4 months from when I purchased it. It is a 2 GB version. All of a sudden it will not show up when I put the USB cable into the USB slot on my laptop, other USB devices self install and show up correctly. I have even purchased a new USB cable and the same thing happens. The device seems to run ok as there is power and the white light flashes on the front of it. I have updated the firmware which installed correctly and even run the WD diagnostics tool and it can find it and says it is operating ok. It also shows up under the Disk Management functionality of windows. Can someone help me please as their are precious files on the drive that I do not want to lose? Thank you in anticipation of your answers.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
What is the best data recovery software to use?
Mar 19, 2012 10:46AM PDT

I have just found out WD will charge for data recovery if I return it under warranty, any ideas of the best software to use please?

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The best software is what works.
Mar 20, 2012 6:06AM PDT

And we don't know if it works till we try it.

-> When faced with the issue you presented I have to CLONE the drive and run the recovery software on the CLONE since we must never make it worse by operating on the ORIGINAL.

Some folk learn this lesson the hard way by losing it all.
Bob

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Cloning Drive
Mar 20, 2012 1:51PM PDT

Bob

Thank you for your response. How do we clone the drive?
Cheers.

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Don't know. Here's how I clone drives.
Mar 21, 2012 4:15AM PDT

I use CLONEZILLA.

Why? Because I can clone as well as save an image of the drive. It's free and while ACRONIS is very nice, CLONEZILLA is free.

Sorry but I don't offer tutorials on use of said software. Plenty of web pages out there about both.
Bob