Today we are going to talk about an error that the WD Passport Essential portable drive gave a friend of mine.
He started having problems getting his computer (running Windows 7) to recognize the drive and, therefore, access its contents.
When connecting it to the PC, a Windows message continually appeared: “Unformatted device: do you want to format it?” I tried to accept but nothing happened.
My friend tried to format it with the original product software “WD quick formatter” but the program gave an error and managed to damage the drive further, leaving it unformatted and without data inside (in his case it does not matter because he had a backup copy).
Not knowing what else to do to fix it, he asked me to try to fix it.
I tried the previous steps again but obviously it didn't work. Then I tried to format it with the Windows 7 device manager, but the only option I could give it was in RAW format, which did not have access nor could it be later formatted to assign FAT or NTFS.
The third attempt was with EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition, but again it failed to format.
Fourth attempt, this time with the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool, which was supposed to be used to repair disks, but it gave a reading error again, so I went to the Windows registry and changed it so that the devices have writing as well... but nothing...
and a few more unsuccessful options.
Fed up with Windows and the hard drive, I went home, booted my Debian, inserted the disk and performed with a simple command:
rokitoh@red-obita: # mkntfs -Q -v -L WD /dev/sde1We assemble the device…
rokitoh@red-obita: # mount /dev/sde1 /media/WDSOLVED, hard drive ready to use…
Regards, rokitoh
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