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I recentley lent my brand new WD Passport Ultra 1TB external hard drive to a friend of mine. When I got it back I wasn't able to access any of my files, and now not all of the partitions appear when I plug it in.

My first approach was to open the disk in disk utilities and run a repair: the response was that it couldnt repair and I should copy those files I could access, delete the whole thing and start over.

Then I tried to run a diagnostic in the WD utilities. The hard drive is detected but nothing happens when I try to do the diagnostics.

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The problem is that we are talking about around 300GB of videos, series and pictures and I would really like to keep those files.

I've read that there are some types of software that can retrieve my files but I'm not really sure which one of them to choose. All help appreciated.

hira lal
2014-12-16 22:37:27
my parsonal messaging delete back plz my inbox
FIDELIS
2014-11-17 21:48:22
Hello, the first thing you could try would be using a linux live CD. To do so, you could download an image from ubuntu:http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop-- Once the image is downloaded burn it to a CD/DVD or USB.-- insert the CD/DVD/USB and restart your computer. Keep in mind that you would have to chance the boot order so that your computer starts from CD/DVD/USB.-- when computer restarts and linux live cd is running, make sure to select live cd option-- once live cd starts, connect our drive-- if drive is recognized, it will be mounted automatically, if not you could try mounting-- if drive is recognized, you should be able to recover your files.There are other options that might work depending on what is wrong with the drive. An external drive can get corrupted if you disconnect it without using the safely remove option. Start with this and if it does not work, let us know