I’ve used the My Passport external hard drive for a bit, then forgot about it for a few months. After I used it again however, it wouldn’t work properly. WD Discovery detects it but won’t let me do anything with it besides set a password and turn on the LED light. The drive is not detected in file explorer. It appears in Disk Management but it won’t let me initialize the disk. When I try to initialize the disk, it gives me an error that states, “Data Error (cyclic redundancy check)”. I’ve tried to clean the drive through command prompt, plugging it into other computers, reinstalling USB controllers, etc. WD Drive Utilities doesn’t allow me to format it or run any tests with it. Is there any way to fix this?
You can try these steps:
- Open Command Prompt and run
chkdsk X: /f /r(replace X with your drive’s letter) to check and repair errors. - If the drive isn’t accessible, try data recovery tools like Stellar Data Recovery, Recuva, or R-Studio to retrieve important files.
- Use
diskpartin Command Prompt to clean the drive (this erases all data). - You can also use WD Drive Utilities or WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic to test the drive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnVg-6DdfZs
A CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) error usually means your Windows PC can’t read data correctly from a storage device. One of the most common causes is bad sectors on a hard drive, often due to hardware wear or damage. CRC errors can also occur on USB drives, CDs/DVDs, or external drives.
If your My Passport external hard drive isn’t severely damaged, you can try using data recovery software to retrieve some or all of your files. It’s best to attempt recovery before running repair tools, since repairs may overwrite or make corrupted files harder to recover. After recovery, you can run CHKDSK to fix logical file system errors and mark bad sectors so the drive won’t try to use them again.
Related blog: How to fix data error cyclic redundancy check and recover lost data?
