Hi,

I was given a Western Digital My Passport Drive Model WDBAAB3200ACH-00. It is a 320GB external 2.5" drive with USB interface. The user is unable to access the drive and I have been tasked with recovering their pictures. The drive does not make any funny noises and seems to power/spin up properly. When I hook it up to either Windows or Mac for preliminary analysis, the drive reports the size of 2TB, which is not possible for a drive this size. I took the drive out of the enclosure to verify that it is in fact a 320GB drive and it is.

Under Windows, I loaded up Active@ Partition Recovery just to see if the drive would register, and it shows as a 2TB drive, and under Mac, when I open up Disk Utility the drive is listed and the size it shows as well is 2TB...

So, I'm kind of puzzled as to what to do at the moment and would like some direction as to where to go from here.

Many thanks for your help!

Sounds like a firmware issue.

Nothing you can do to DIY this one, you need special tools and knowledge to sort this one out.

You need pro assistance on this one I'm afraid.

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

For the behaviour you describe, IMHO the problem is beyond "normal" tools, like those you are using - the drive f/w does not seem to be initialising properly, so the fix will not be DIY. Out of interest, did the end customer drop or shock the drive, shortly before this problem started? Any other unusual event?

So you will need professional help, if the data is important enough for the end customer to pay for it to be recovered. I remember that member jono-ats works at a US WD-authorised company; you might also get recommendations from other board members.

Good luck!

[edited to add: "Snap", pcimage, and of course for any Europe/UK-based customers, you'd be a close member who could help ]

Hi Vulcan,

I am not sure if the end user dropped/shocked the drive or any other unusual event happened. I was given the drive and just told to see if I could recover any data.

Thanks!

Understood - however without that info from the user, then some possible causes can't be excluded/included. In any case, the end-result remains the same: it's not a DIY fix IMHO.

Looks like this mught be a common issue, Ive got one the same here and google has brought up quite a few.
No solution though!

No DIY solution, not "No solution" !

Are you saying that your drive identifies itself with a 2TB capacity?

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Agree with you, i had several cases like that,

in addition, this drive did not fall because its reading, i felt = heads and will never read ANY + clicks

_________________
Kuwait Data Recovery - UNIX GTC
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. By: Albert Einstein