My 4TB Passport just quit on me! What to do?

This morning, my WD 4TB Passport quit on me. Was working fine last night and when I went to turn on the laptop this morning, I got this message
RED X D:\is not accessible
The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable
I rebooted several times and tried it on my other laptop, same message.
I have 40 years of my photography photos on there and my backup Passport that my Uncle has, they don't know where he put it as he passed away last month... so I'm in a panic stage right now.

Any help is appreciated.

Moderator... can you please correct my subject line mistake. I put 4GB when it should be 4TB
Thanks!

 

If it's not working on multiple computers, and the data is very important, I wouldn't mess with any of the self-recovery methods that are available. I'd go straight to a specialist. This firm is who helped Linus get back his primary server, so I'd say they're pretty reliable.

Data Recovery Services by WeRecoverData.comⓇ | Hard Drive Recovery & Repair Services

 

This won't help you now with this issue, but always remember to make multiple (3 or more) backups for VERY important data.

I also consider my lifetime's pictures to be very important to me, I know I have a bunch of backups over the years between safe deposit box, my office desk, and many external drives and computers at home. When I get a larger drive and copy all files to it, I just keep my old one as an emergency previous backup which is how I ended up with so many of them. It's not worth much money to sell anyway so it serves that emergency backup of a backup for me.

 

I don't know what OS you're trying to access the data from but, it's worth trying Linux LiveCD to bypass the junk Windows uses when it comes to drive recovery.

There are apps you can use that will do a forensic copy of the drive if the controller isn't completely shot.

If you can't get it working via USB with different cables it might just be the controller and shucking the drive from the shell and using a SATA adapter / enclosure could be a cheap option to keep using it as an external drive. If it's the drive itself that's shot then it's easier to work with outside of the vendor shell to recover the data.

In the future it's worthwhile to spend just slightly more to make your own using a drive + enclosure where you have a bit more control over the HW being used. 3.5" drive enclosures / drives aren't the fastest but, they'll work well for bulk data. If you have a specific set of files going M.2 + enclosure whether SSD/VNME (price / performance) less chance of breakdown due to no moving parts or even a SSD USB-C flash drive yields 500MB/s+ for quick backups.

The biggest issue with these external drives though is the constant power surges when connecting / disconnecting them. If you can connect them to something powered 24/7 like your router USB port they tend to last longer. If your router doesn't have a USB port you can get DAS enclosures that you can leave powered on 24/7 and just connect the USB cable when needed.

 

Most do the times on these western digital external the interface itself on the enclosure craps out. The other issue is wd is know for using some crazy proprietary connector in the drive and enclosure and jot standard data/power. You could open it to see if it isproprietary. If not get a generic external enclosure and plug it in. If it is then you can always get another external and take it apart and plug it in to the new enclosure. I’ve had many external wd drives fail and it was the enclosure not the drive itself.

 

Both laptops have the 24/7 powered USB ports. Maybe my new Dell XPS 13 I got caused the problem as I used my Passport on it last night for the first time... worked fine, but when I hooked it back up to the older one in my office, it wouldn't work and it's worked there for 3 years now. Maybe I didn't shut it down right on my new computer as it won't work on it now either.

 

I doubt it's an issue with swapping from one PC to another. Looked it up on Amazon and it appears to be a 2.5" drive w/ USB-mini-B connection.

Being 3+ old though does make it sound like it's potentially failing. Does it make any clicking noises when you plug it into the PC? Might have to put the drive to your ear to hear them or any spin up sounds.

If it's clicking then it's starting to fail. Repeatedly plugging it in though sometimes tricks it into mounting the files to grab them off the drive. Make sure you have enough space to move everything to a new location.

If you need a new drive to move things to then build a new system yourself w/ an enclosure / drive. Seeing as thought he current Passport is ~100MB/s that's a bit slow to be moving big chunks of data.

 

Do the Freezer bag and put in fridge to cool down for some time and try to hookup and access and take your data off before it goes out again. Since I suspect it's platters you can still get the data off but if not your worst case is a computer to attempt to find and remove the data before it's gone.