I accidentally formatted my WD 5TB MyPassport drive. I used this drive to migrate my PC files and I’ve lost everything! What is the best way to recover my files? Is there anything WD can so for support?
formatting overwrites the crucial parts of the indexes so it’s all but impossible to recover
some unformat programs have been developed and all came up short
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I formatted a 1TB WD drive years ago to test how much data i could recover from it
succeeded in recovering 99% of it.
There’s lots of data recovery software out there, but the one i used was GetDataBack for NTFS
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Ignore the post from the other user.
1st of all don’t write any data to drive as this will reduce the change of recovering your data.
2nd, you will need another Hard Drive to recover the data to ie. You can recover the data to you 5TB Drive … if the drive was full when you formatted it, you’ll need a second 5TB Drive
3rd, When using Data Recovery Software, don’t check any “Quick Recovery” option … always select Full, or Deep Analyse
4th, To recover a substantial amount of data from a 5TB … it will take a very long time, not hours, but Days
No, WD don’t do Data Recovery
They will only recommend Data Recovery Services … $$$$$$$
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Thank you all for the advice and quick responses. I have tried certain disk recovery programs with no success. I will continue to try other software to see if it works, if not I may send the drive to one of the 3rd party recovery services. I really appreciate all the support from the community; it gives me hope!
Like I said, formatting is very destructive
Have you tried Stellar Data Recovery software? If not, then I suggest you to give a try to Stellar Data Recovery Free Edition, you don’t need to pay any amount neither they ask for any details. Just simply download the software & run a scan on affected drive. If it shows the desired results then it means that data can be recovered. You can either recover up to 1 GB data at free or you can proceed to upgrade the software to paid version to recover unlimited data.
But initially, its absolutely free & also, it is one of the reliable data recovery software.
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I’m so sorry to hear about your predicament; it can be quite upsetting to inadvertently format a WD MyPassport drive, particularly if it holds crucial migration data.
You can do to recover files safely:
Stop using the drive immediately. Avoid saving or copying anything new to it — this prevents overwriting your old data, which can still be recovered. Make use of trustworthy data recovery software. Expert programs like Recuva, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, and BLR Data Recovery Tool can scan the formatted WD drive and assist you in recovering lost or erased files (documents, images, videos, etc.).
- Connect your WD MyPassport to your computer.
- Launch the recovery tool and select your external drive.
- Run a deep scan to locate formatted data.
- Preview and restore the files you want to recover.
Consider getting in touch with WD’s official data recovery partners if software recovery is unsuccessful. Although WD doesn’t handle recovery directly, they frequently suggest reliable services that are experts at recovering data from WD drives, such as Ontrack or DriveSavers. Always keep a backup in several places for future protection, like cloud storage or another external drive, to guard against data loss during formatting or migration.
Do you remember how you formatted the WD 5TB MyPassport drive?
In the following cases, your files are likely still recoverable:
(1). Open This PC, right-click the WD external hard drive, select Format, choose NTFS or exFAT, make sure the “Quick Format” option is selected, then click Start and OK to confirm.
(2). Press Win + X, select “Disk Management,” right-click the drive, and choose Format.
(3). If you encounter an error message asking, “You need to format the drive before you can use it. Do you want to format it?” and you clicked the “Format disk” button.
These situations indicate a Quick Format, meaning only the file system table is erased, but the actual data remains on the drive. As long as you haven’t added new files, the data that hasn’t been overwritten is still recoverable using data recovery software. For more information, see: Recover Lost/Deleted Data from WD External Hard Drive.
In contrast, the following situations involve a Full Format, which makes data recovery much harder or even impossible:
(1). Open “This PC,” right-click the WD drive, select Format, uncheck the “Quick Format” box, choose your file system (NTFS/FAT32/exFAT), set a volume label, and click Start, confirming with OK.
(2). In Disk Management (Win + X > Disk Management), right-click your WD volume, select Format, uncheck “Perform a quick format,” choose your file system and allocation unit size, then click OK.
(3). Use specialized disk wiping software to erase your external hard drive.
A Full Format overwrites the entire drive, making it very difficult to recover any old data.
