Help with Western Digital Passport Ultra 1TB external HDD, please.

[Chairman Maouth]

I coud use some help please.

The HDD portable external drive is at least 10-12 years old. I don't think I wiped the drive, but there is a small possibility of that. This is the model.

I accidentally clicked on 'save login information" when accessing the external drive. I never want to do that. I want to have to enter a password whenever I access the drive for security reasons. If someone steals my computer they don't need a password to access my external storage.

I couldn't find how to re-enable password protection anywhere, but something I did made the volume on the external drive inaccessible. It is now zero. I tried changing the drive letter and about a million other things I got from Google but had no luck. I am almost certain I didn't do a format and I think my files are still there but the drive shows no files and it has a zero volume. Interestingly, I was able to load a picture onto the external drive so I can write data to it, but I cannot see my old files. When I open the drive it's essentially an empty folder. I would really appreciate any help I can get recovering my files.

Thanks.

Here are some images that may be helpful. I'll break them up into a couple of posts. C is my Windows 11 OS.

Click to read more...

 

[Osprey]

For the record, I've never used WD's drive/security software, but I'll try to help.

I suggest following the steps under "Known Password Steps" halfway down this page:

Western Digital Support | Western Digital

Find detailed answers to your support questions for your Western Digital products.

support-en.wd.com

Once unlocked with the WD Security app, see if you can access your files from File Explorer. If so, I recommend backing them up somewhere else, like a USB stick, especially since the drive is 10+ years old and could die at any moment. If the files amount to only 3GB, like it appears, that shouldn't be hard. After that, you should be able to use the WD Security app again to lock them again. If the login information is still saved after that, try unlocking the drive again and locking it with a different password. That should invalidate the saved login information. If not and as a last resort, you could try re-formatting the drive (probably with WD Drive Utilities, which is linked near the top of the above web page), copying your files to it from your backup and then re-locking it.

If none of that helps, you might want to contact WD support: Western Digital Support | Western Digital

 

[Chairman Maouth]

For the record, I've never used WD's drive/security software, but I'll try to help.

I suggest following the steps under "Known Password Steps" halfway down this page:

Western Digital Support | Western Digital

Find detailed answers to your support questions for your Western Digital products.

support-en.wd.com

Once unlocked with the WD Security app, see if you can access your files from File Explorer. If so, I recommend backing them up somewhere else, like a USB stick, especially since the drive is 10+ years old and could die at any moment. If the files amount to only 3GB, like it appears, that shouldn't be hard. After that, you should be able to use the WD Security app again to lock them again. If the login information is still saved after that, try unlocking the drive again and locking it with a different password. That should invalidate the saved login information. If not and as a last resort, you could try re-formatting the drive (probably with WD Drive Utilities, which is linked near the top of the above web page), copying your files to it from your backup and then re-locking it.

If none of that helps, you might want to contact WD support: Western Digital Support | Western Digital

Thanks for your help.

I already tried accessing the files from File Explorer. There is nothing to access. It's like the drive is blank. And there are close to 900 GB in files on the drive. Most of that is TV, movies, and live music concerts and videos, but some is saved personal information accumulated over a span of 25 years that is extremely important to me, some of which is not backed up elsewhere. I guess I'm learning a lesson about that.

I had already tried the WD Security tools and they were of no help.

Boiled down, here is the issue. I know my password. That is not the problem. The problem was that I enabled auto login by mistake. I couldn't find any way to re-enable it so I tried something that messed things up. I am still convinced there is nearly 900 GB of data on the drive but it's invisible and therefore useless. I need to find it.

Thanks again.

 

[Albatros]

In any case you won't wipe 900GB without noticing it, the rest is just a matter of recovery methods. I wouldn't do anything that isn't carefully planned beforehand.

 

[Chairman Maouth]

In any case you won't wipe 900GB without noticing it, the rest is just a matter of recovery methods. I wouldn't do anything that isn't carefully planned beforehand.

That's what I'm thinking too. I'm not doing anything more without solid advice. I'm going to post this on a WD forum. I'll let you know what happens. Thanks again.

 

[Osprey]

If the files are still there, you should be able to recover them with file recovery software. A free application that I've successfully used before is Recuva.

Download Recuva | Recover deleted files, free!

Recover and un-delete files with Recuva, the award-winning file recovery tool by the makers of CCleaner. Download the latest version today.

www.ccleaner.com

I would install it, run it, see what it finds on the drive and try to recover it. If you recover anything, do it to another drive. Don't do any saving of any kind to the WD drive, since it may overwrite the files that are there and interfere with future attempts to restore the drive.

 

[Chairman Maouth]

If the files are still there, you should be able to recover them with file recovery software. A free application that I've successfully used before is Recuva.

Download Recuva | Recover deleted files, free!

Recover and un-delete files with Recuva, the award-winning file recovery tool by the makers of CCleaner. Download the latest version today.

www.ccleaner.com

I would install it, run it, see what it finds on the drive and try to recover it. If you recover anything, do it to another drive. Don't do any saving of any kind to the WD drive, since it may overwrite the files that are there and interfere with future attempts to restore the drive.

Thanks. I was already considering something like that but I already posted on a WD forum and I'd like to see if there's help there first. I will definitely try it if nothing positive happens there.

I notice there's a free and a paid version of Recuva. With the free version I imagine there's a limit on file size you can recover. Some of my movies on the drive are over 20 GB with some of the TV series being over 30. I honestly don't care as much about those as I do my personal and work files. Movies and TV series can be downloaded again. My personal stuff can't be. Still though, it's only 33 bucks to download a paid version and that would be worth it. I could suss it out when I try the free version.

The first thing I will do is get my personal files off the drive and onto my laptop. There's enough room on it. I'll breathe easier then and worry about the movies, TV and MP3s later.

Thanks, you've been a lot of help.

 

[Osprey]

I notice there's a free and a paid version of Recuva. With the free version I imagine there's a limit on file size you can recover. Some of my movies on the drive are over 20 GB with some of the TV series being over 30. I honestly don't care as much about those as I do my personal and work files. Movies and TV series can be downloaded again. My personal stuff can't be. Still though, it's only 33 bucks to download a paid version and that would be worth it. I could suss it out when I try the free version.

I don't think that the free version of Recuva has any recovery limitations. The download page doesn't list any and gives "virtual hard drive support, automatic updates and priority support" as the three things that you get with the pro version, so I don't see any point in buying it. If the free version doesn't get the job done, try another recovery software, like Active@ File Recovery (pretty affordable at $30) or Stellar Data Recovery ($60, but seemingly the best, from what I've read). They have demos/trials, so you can try them out before buying.