WD HDD appearing as a wiped disk?

[Rlnplehshalo]

I recently purchased a 'Western Digital My Book Essential 2TB'(Desktop) external hard drive (with USB 3). I hooked it up, installed the software it was all good.

However just now it has conflicted with my other 'Western Digital Elements 750GB'(Portable) external hard drive.
I think updating the 'WD SmartWare' had something to do with it.

Upon completion of updating that software my 750GB drive would appear as 'Local Disk (I'.
Windows would then ask me to format it, I of course said no as I didn't want to cause any damage.

I have attached images showing the scenario.
My newly purchased drive is the one on bottom left, and the ruined drive is far right.

The second image shows that the drive appears to have no data on it, nor have any capability to hold any. Strange how an hour ago I had it filled with about 700GB of files.

What should I do? Any recovery software any could recommend? advice? Anything would be much appreciated!

 

[murphychris]

The second image shows that the drive appears to have no data on it, nor have any capability to hold any. Strange how an hour ago I had it filled with about 700GB of files.

What should I do? Any recovery software any could recommend? advice? Anything would be much appreciated!

It doesn't strike you as odd that the disk reports 0 bytes used and 0 bytes free?

Sounds like the disk needs to be repartitioned, reformatted with zeros, then do some burn in tests and see if it remains reliable.

Hopefully you aren't thinking it was OK to trust a hard drive, let alone a new one, let alone one without burn in testing, to the sole copy of important data.

 

[Rlnplehshalo]

Ok today my Hard drive has reappeared as normal with all files on it and 700GB of 750Gb used as before as if it never happened. Good thing I didnt do anything to it. I read up on other stories with the exact same outcome on the same drive.

 

[murphychris]

Ok today my Hard drive has reappeared as normal with all files on it and 700GB of 750Gb used as before as if it never happened. Good thing I didnt do anything to it. I read up on other stories with the exact same outcome on the same drive.

Not exactly confidence inspiring.

 

[Rlnplehshalo]

Not exactly confidence inspiring.

Well if you have this problem I would suggest running 'Recuva' and it will find all the files and thats how I knew they were still on there.