I have a 2TB Western Digital external drive that originally came in a enclosure. It was setup to backup though its native program WD Smartware.
One day the drive asked "You need to format the disk in drive x: before you can use it"
I have ran the program though OnTrack, Enterprise Undelete, Wondershare Data Recovery and Recuva.
OnTrack found some .rar files that would not uncompress. Enterprise Undelete and Wondershare did not find anything.
Recuva howerver was able to recover the original .pdf manuals from the drive and the .jpg images that WD uses for their setup/install. So it found something!
I performed a "quick format" by advice of one of the programs to get a drive letter to scan. Now when I plug the drive in it is recognized, but formatted.
What should be my plan of attack with Recuva? What options might help me restore our missing data? It is under 500GB in size of various pictures, mp3s, videos and documents.
We did take it out of the enclosure because we initially thought that was the problem. Getting the same result in and out of the enclosure accessing the disk.
We are now using a USB to SATA converter to run the scans.
Too many unknowns, yet. What is the drive model number? Is there a bridgeboard with encryption? was it removed? And if partitions are encrypted.. you'll note that there is an un-encrypted partition that can still be read, namely the setup and doc files. Maybe there are two encrypted and one un-encrypted?
And you can "unformat" or convert into another format, not without harming the data further. To change disk formats you must read and re-write each and every file.
Drive lock - Gain peace of mind knowing that your data is protected from unauthorized access or theft with password protection and military-grade 256-bit hardware-based encryption. Illuminated capacity gauge - See at a glance how much space is available on your drive.
I'm helping a pal of mine with this. I showed him this picture and he is 100% sure he never set any passwords on this setting.
Unfortunately the initial thought was the housing was bad. It was brought to a local PC shop where they removed the hard drive and were told to trash the case.
It looks like you will need to purchase (probably from ebay or craigslist) an exact housing with the exact bridgeboard. The bridgeboard has an encrypting chip. While WD (and other mfgs) change designs all the time - I'm reasonably confident your disk has parts of it encrypted. Courtesy of the now thrown-away bridgeboard.
Report back when when you get another one. It is then that Recuva might work some magic. If you don't want to muck around dealing with it. Then seek a professional service.
Why DEAR GOD WHY OHH WHY are these so-called IT consultant firms and small-time PC shops so eager to throw away half of the hard disk electronics!!?? Dammit Jim! It's not just an interface! Give me a paddle so I can beat them senseless for the greater good of mankind!! I see disks like this all the time! Stripped of their housing and electronics. UGGHHHH!! Just goes to show you what an "expert" this so so-called expert really is.