Hi all,

I have bought a brand new WD external HDD (USB port) a few weeks ago. I made an update on the firmware of the hdd. Everything seemed to be ok. It is a 500 GB , Western Digital Passport Essential.

The HDD has the serial ! WD5000BMVV
LBA 976773168

But when I shut down the HDD and when I plugged it again recelty, it is not detected by Windows anymore.
I have tried to plug it on a linux system and a MacOS system, it is not detected.

But when I plugg it, it is alimented (the Lights are fine).

I sent it to a data recovery company and I have a nice quotation of 550€ to recover data. That's pretty expensive for my pocket !

So I would like to try to gather my data by myself.

The recovery data company told me that the partition is corrupted/disrupted.

Do you know:

What software should I use to force my PC to detect the HDD ?
Any help welcome !

For your information, I am on the hdd guru website but I am NOT at all a guru in hdd

Why you want to change your FW on this drive. They are not cell phones and you do not need to flash your FW on them.

If this is true what the recovery company is telling you that the partition is corrupted then it has to be fixed in order to find your data on this one. Normally this is a logical recovery. Unless you have done some other sort of damage to this by flashing your FW.

Maybe if you are good in Hex editor you can repair and fix this problem on your own. You are going to need knowledge of how the partition table works and how to use a hex editor to fix this problem. There is some software out that can repair partition problems on this but like all you need to understand the working in partition tables in order to do this one.

Maybe someone here can help you out for a more reasonable price on this one. To purchase the software you will need will be almost as expensive as the recovery its self on this one. I would help you out but considering I am so far from you it is not worth to send your drive here to me. I know there is some good companys and members of this forum not too far from you. You can try to contact by PM Sean from pcimage, Domor, BlackST and a few others in Europe. They can do this one for you and I am sure at a lot less than the company in France is offering you on this one. That is to say it is actually a partition table problem on this one.

Good luck to you on this and next time do not flash the FW on your drives it is not always necessary to do this one.

_________________
Iorana Haraharaini

If Windows (nd other OS's) are not seeing it as a Physical Disk anymore
(ie no Disk 1 etc) appears in disk manager when it is plugged it
then it isnt the normal partition table that is corrupted (unfortunately, as that would be easy to fix)

Sound more like the internal vendor partition for the user data area is corrupted/damaged

This would need more specialised tools knowledge to check, made even harder by the direct USB only Interface to this drive

What flash update program did you use ?
I'm surprised it was able to update via the usb only interface

A Pro should be able to look at it and give a better diagnosis relatively cheaply.
Whether it is fixable for a reasonable price is another matter.

Well, I have tried MHDD but it can find my HDD (even with USB support)

I flashed it through the Western Digital FW update software. And it seemed to work fine !!!

By the way, I am ok to pay for recovery but it's definitely to expensive for me. Any idea about a company which could help me on this, at less than 200 € ?

Not possible. How much do you pay in taxes in percent in France and how much is 1 hr. of work reasonably paid ?

Vat = 20% and one "technical" hour is 75euros.

We are close to france (30 min from lille) but for less than 200 Euro you will find nobody i think.
I'm willing to take a look and make you an offer free of charge.
If interested, pm me.

Dobre

_________________
Murphy was an optimist

Datarecovery in Belgium, Holland, France and Germany
Datarecoverytools http://www.drtools.eu

I presume that this has been done via the WD SmartWare utility?

This is a controlled update that is more to do with SmartWare than the drive's own SA firmware if the above is true. In this case the manufacturer provides firmware updates just as mobile phone manufacturers do.