reset WD external hard drive

bruceGH4 · Jan 20, 2017

I scrubbed my WD 1t passport external hard drive with some third party software and now it is unrecognizable as a storage medium.
I guess some key sector in there was also erased. Is there any way to reset these things? Right now I can't make windows 10 read/write or format on it.

Asus x99-A-ii, i7-6800k, Gamer Storm H2O by Deepcool, 4x8gb ddr4-2133 g.skill ram, sandisk 240gb sshd, toshiba 3tb hdd,
Evda gold 750, windows 10 home, amd radeon hd 6700 in Fractal Midi Case.
For editing video in 4K.

ATMINSIDE · Jan 20, 2017

Go to Disk Management, create a new partition.

bruceGH4 · Jan 20, 2017

not showing WD drive

ATMINSIDE said:
Go to Disk Management, create a new partition.

Drive not showing up in disk manager. In fact, not even showing up as a USB connection.
Maybe there is a USB workaround that will make a connection?

ATMINSIDE · Jan 20, 2017

Tried it on another system?
Does it show up in the BIOS?
Tried another USB port?

bruceGH4 · Jan 21, 2017

Tried on a windows 7 laptop and one other port. I was getting a windows error message, something like "windows does not recognize device/damaged device" .

trents · Jan 21, 2017

See if it shows up in command prompt with the diskpart /list disk command. But you need to check in bios first to see if it's there. If it's not showing up in bios it won't show up anywhere else. Use a USB 2.0 port.

bruceGH4 · Jan 21, 2017

Found a usb2 port at the back of my ASUS x-99 a ii. That was a good tip. I booted up, found the drive in the list of USB devices with an exclamation. In there I uninstalled the driver and it disappeared. Then I unplugged,plugged back into the usb2 port and now it sees it. Now I will try to repartition using WD utilities.

Not showing up in WD utilities.
Also in USB devices has asterisk and says This device cannot start (code 10)
Operation Failed.

The driver is apparently up to date.

trents · Jan 21, 2017

How old is the drive? Did you happen to check it's health via SMART data with something like Crystaldiskinfo? It sounds to me like the drive itself or the usb conversion electronics are dead. I would be tempted to remove the drive from the enclosure and check it by connecting it to a SATA port. Typically, the USB conversion component gives up the ghost before the drive itself goes bad.

Don't rule out the possibility that by coincidence the drive or the enclosure's usb electronics failed at the same time you were scrubbing it. Stranger things have happened.

bruceGH4 · Jan 25, 2017

USB to sata

Thanks for the ideas. I think that this drive can't pass any information via the USB connection due to some failure there.
The drive does seem to spin up inside there, and then there is a USB problem. I took the drive out of the enclosure and there was a set of 12 pins beside the sort of wide proprietary USB cable plug. I have seen a lot of sata to USB adapters available to allow connecting a sata hard drive to a USB port, but no adapters to allow plugging a USB drive into a sata port on the motherboard.
Think I will just wait for a sshd price drop and get a new drive and avoid WD drives in the future.

ATMINSIDE · Jan 25, 2017

Can you post a picture of the drive you took out?

Alaric · Jan 25, 2017

Think I will just wait for a sshd price drop and get a new drive

That could be a while, unfortunately. http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php/779396-SSD-(and-HDD)-Prices-About-to-Go-Up

Soulcatcher668 · Jan 25, 2017

Why not hook directly to a SATA port on the mobo? Best chance of success IMO.

bruceGH4 · Jan 28, 2017

drive inside

The drive inside My Passport is this. There is no cable that will connect this directly to sata on M|B

Soulcatcher668 · Jan 28, 2017

Ahhh I see. The new ones just have adapter on them that can be removed and then you have SATA power and SATA connectors.

My bad.

ATMINSIDE · Jan 29, 2017

Wow, I hadn't seen a drive made like that until now.

Tír na nÓg · Jan 29, 2017

Yes, got the same WD passport... That sucks.

larrymoencurly · Feb 10, 2017

It's possible to connect those USB-only drives to SATA because they're actually SATA with a built-in SATA-USB chip:

Another explanation: http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?t=20794&start=

Basically they break the connections to the USB bridge chip and wire a SATA port upstream. I don't know if you have to add tiny coupling capacitors (SATA signals are AC).

bruceGH4 · Feb 11, 2017

I was hoping for a software solution

larrymoencurly said:
It's possible to connect those USB-only drives to SATA because they're actually SATA with a built-in SATA-USB chip:

Another explanation: http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?t=20794&start=

Basically they break the connections to the USB bridge chip and wire a SATA port upstream. I don't know if you have to add tiny coupling capacitors (SATA signals are AC).

Thanks for the links. My soldering skills are poor so my odds of success rewiring this drive are low. At least I don't have any data on the drive.
I still thinkn that, since software rendered my drive unusable, there should be a software solution to re-instate USB access.
Anyhow, drive was slow. Next one will be ss.

reset WD external hard drive

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