My Passport WDBYVG0010BBK-0B

I have this external HardDrive I purchased a few months ago. I accidentally deleted the device driver from the external drive and emptied my Recycle Bin. I downloaded the software on my PC but I cant get it on the drive and have drive be recognized. Can someone help me? I do have things on the drive I need to recover

Hi @ttfn13
Have you opened a Support Case? If not opened, for more information, please contact the WD Technical Support team for the best assistance and troubleshooting:

Hello,

You can open device manager > Locate Your External Hard Drive and search for drivers.

You can run the chkdsk command in the Command Prompt to fix any file system errors. If these steps don’t help then use data recovery software like Stellar, Recuva or Easues to recover your files.

Can you retrieve a SMART report?

https://www.reddit.com/r/datarecoverysoftware/wiki/index/smart/

These are the software tools that data recovery professionals use:

https://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=3208

Nobody in pro data recovery uses Stellar, Recuva or EaseUS. In fact, many of the pro tools are cheaper and better.

To recover data from your external hard drive after deleting the device driver, first, unplug the drive and plug it back in. Next, check if the drive shows up by right-clicking the Start button and selecting Disk Management; if it appears without a letter, assign one. Then, open Device Manager, locate your drive under Disk drives, and update or reinstall the driver if there’s an issue. You can also visit the manufacturer’s website to download the latest drivers for your external hard drive. If the drive is recognized but you still can’t access your files, use data recovery software like Stellar Data Recovery, Recuva, or Disk Drill. Install the recovery software on your PC and follow the instructions to scan the external hard drive for lost files. These steps should help you recover your data.