Odd behavior from WD My Passport

[BoxerRobban472]

Hi everyone!

I'm trying to help my friend transfer her files from her WD My Passport (for Mac) to my Mac, format it and transfer the files back again. This is because it's behaving very odd software-wise; Sometimes the files show up, other times they don't. It's practically impossible to copy files from the HDD to the computer, most of the times it either gets stuck on counting the number of files it's going to copy, or it's copying at an excruciatingly slow pace (like, it would take 2 days to copy 100MB) and other times (maybe 1/10) it works as normal.

When checking the disk in disk utilities (that is, those times its possible to open disk utilities. Most of the time it just keep loading), it says that everything is normal. It's almost never possible to eject the disk without having to shut down the computer.

I really don't know how to proceed with this, any tips are appreciated

Thanks!

 

[BrianBaughn]

Where are you, exactly, in this process?

 

[BoxerRobban472]

Where are you, exactly, in this process?

Thank you for your response! More or less where I started. I've managed to transfer about 1GB out of 100, and that was that one time when I "got lucky" and it worked as it supposed to, but other than luck I don't really know what to rely on so to speak.

 

[BrianBaughn]

The drive may not be usable at all. It might be the drive itself failing or the WD housing that it's in could be failing. But as you say it might just need re-formatting.

The Finder doesn't like working with faulty drives or even partitions that have been corrupted, as you have seen. There are a few options you could try. A good one might be to use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the external to a folder or a new disk image on your Mac. CCC will keep up with whatever errors occur during the copying. CCC is fully functional in demo mode for 30 days so if you don't own it and have never downloaded it you won't have to pay for it.

 

[Fishrrman]

Here's my suggestion:

First, you need a "second drive" to "receive the files". It could be a hard drive, or it could be a USB flashdrive.

Next, you need to download CarbonCopyCloner from here:
http://www.bombich.com/download.html
CCC is FREE to download and use for 30 days

Next, connect the WD drive and your "target" drive or USB flashdrive.

Now, open CCC.
On the left, select the WD drive.
To the right, select the target drive (or flashdrive).

I believe you'll see a popup menu under the source drive -- choose "clone".
Where it says "safetynet" -- set that to OFF.

Click the "clone" button on the bottom right.

See what happens now.
CCC will try to copy "the good files". If it runs into one or more corrupted files, it will "pass them by", and go right on trying to copy as many good files as it can find.
The finder won't do that. When finder is trying to copy files, if it runs into a bad file, it "stops the copying".
CCC keeps right on going.

Try doing this.
It may "make the difference" for you.

 

[ZapNZs]

I agree trying CCC is worthwhile.

You could also download the trial of DriveDX, which can pull SMART data from the drive and tell you if the drive is likely failing (or if the enclosure is causing certain errors.) If the drive is in fact failing, and the data is so important that it must be recovered no matter what, IMO you should stop using the drive immediately.

If the SMART data indicates the drive is physically healthy, you could try running Disk Utility's First Aid on the drive again (as you noted Disk Utility is not working with it.) In more extreme cases of directory corruption, you could hit it with Disk Warrior if you happen to have a copy.

For whatever reason, Linux seems to work better with backing up HFS drives that have a variety of issues that cause them to work poorly on macOS. If all else fails, this could be a last-try attempt before professional data recovery.

 

[BoxerRobban472]

Please do pardon my late response to this, but I would like to thank everyone of you for your help, truly!

I followed your advice and scanned the disk in several disk utility-softwares, and unfortunately the drive had a few bad blocks. As copying the files on OS X wouldn't work, I booted Linux Cinnamon on a SD-card and copied all the files I could. I wasn't able to copy all of them, but most and I'm really happy for that!

Again, thank you all very much for your help!