WD 2TB - no files no partition

[Mike1951]

Suddenly error message 'no writeable WD partition found'

and

No files?

Where have all my backups gone?!

any ideas?

[HDDRS]

check your disk manager to see if the drive gets detected for its size (2TB in your case).

[Mike1951]

it was working fine. The disk manager recognises the drive J: and shows 1.58tb free space. Newish PC with windows 7. The WD software is asking me to set up the drive??

It is like the software thinks it's a new drive with nothing on it. 

[HDDRS]

file system could be corrupt. anything happened to the drive prior to failure?

try another computer or another USB port first.

[Mike1951]

Thanks for your reply. tried another usb port - no different. plugged into a laptop. recognised drive and asked for unlock password - but i didn't load software.

 nothing happened to the drive before failure - it goes from the filing cabinet to the desk and back again.

[Wizzzzard]

I had this happen to an internal drive several years ago, it sounds like your partition information may have been corrupted, I always remove my external drives from in windows using the safely remove hardware icon in the taskbar so I don't risk this happening.

I used Stellar Phoenix recovery software to recover the data, it takes a long time to scan the drive but I was able to recover my entire mp3 collection that was lost,  I don't know if this software works on external drives but if not there must be a program that does.