Western Digital MyBook External Drive stopped working Topic is solved

[chuer23]

I am adding an additional screenshot showing the results of ddrescue, which I forgot to include in my previous post.

Text of my previous post is listed below.

I was able to get ddrescue to run (see attached log.txt file) and it reported that it was able to recover 100% of my data, but now the destination disk (USB 2T external hard drive) is not recognized. I can see it when I run lsblk, but it isn't recognized in Files. I am assuming that ddrescue overwrote the NTFS file system on the destination hard drive, and I don't know now how to access the drive.

See screenshots attached showing before and after ddrescue was run. Not sure what I did wrong or the next steps, but any help would be sincerely appreciated.

[recuperation]

You successfully cloned your broken disk with a size of 1 TB onto your disk with a size of 2 TB.
As you selected the 2TB-disk as a target you cloned the source.
If there was a file system on that target disk you could have pointed ddrescue to write into a file by stating a path to file located in your mounted 2TB-device.

If there was any data in your previous existing file system, anything located in the first 1TB of your 2TB-drive has been overwritten now.

You could now have Testdisk work on that 2TB-disk as described here:

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step

If there was any data in the untouched last 1TB of your 2TB-disk this might lead to TestDisk showing "false positive" finds based on that irrelevant data.
Anyway, by trying to list the partitions using the p-key you can identify invalid content.

If quick search and deeper search do not yield the desired result, use some commercial software.
PhotoRec - as always - will be your helper of last resort if everything else fails.

[chuer23]

Hello,

I tried quick and deeper search, but no luck (see attached screenshots). The screenshot named 2024-06-27 13-25-55, says the structure is okay, but when I hit enter, I get a message saying "Can't open filesystem. Filesystem seems damaged - screenshot named 2024-06-27 13-25-55. Any other attempts that I can do with Testdisk? If not, do you have a recommendation for commercial software. I was thinking about using Disk Drill, do you think that would be a good choice? Any advice you can provide will be greatly appreciated. Thank you for all your help so far!!

[recuperation]

Hello,

I tried quick and deeper search, but no luck (see attached screenshots). The screenshot named 2024-06-27 13-25-55, says the structure is okay,

The term "structure OK" most likely refers to the partition structure only but does not evaluate the internal health state of each partition.

but when I hit enter

Hitting the enter key is not the right choice at that moment. Theoretically you need to check each of the four partition for readable content using the p-key ("list files"). Practically the three small ones can be ommitted assuming you had one big partition on that disk. If you succeeded in listing files from the first one you would have to change its status from deleted to primary and save that partition structure which then would contain just one big partition. If listing files fail though, you would need to use some commercial software or PhotoRec in the worst case.

, I get a message saying "Can't open filesystem. Filesystem seems damaged - screenshot named 2024-06-27 13-25-55. Any other attempts that I can do with Testdisk?

No. By the way, all my statements above are basically an application of what I recommended you to read
https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step
for your case.

If not, do you have a recommendation for commercial software.

No, because I am lacking the experience with commercial software unfortunately.

[chuer23]

Recuperation,

I did try using P-key to list files before hitting enter, but none of the partitions showed any files. I will try a commercial software. Thank you again for all the support.

[recuperation]

Fair products have a test mode that help you evaluate the success of recovery. Therefore there is no need to buy a black box without knowing if it helps or not. If everything fails, PhotoRec may help. Good luck!