Windows 10: Is this a known problem with WD external drive security?

I've got an external USB3 WD 4 TB drive I use for backups. It is formatted as an NTFS drive. When travelling I take the drive and hook it up to my laptop. So I installed the WD Drive Security software that requires a password to "unlock" the drive and make it usable. All this has worked fine for a couple of years.

About a month or so ago I encountered some errors on the drive. I think the errors were caused by a power loss to my desktop system when the drive was attached to it. At any rate I used the Tools option on drive properties to repair the drive. This seemed to work OK, but I was still getting errors on the drive's Recycle bin. So I tried running CHKDSK on it.

CHKDSK reported it could not function because the drive was a RAW format drive (whatever that is). I opened Disk Management and it reported the drive was NTFS, and that the single partition on the drive was OK. But I was still getting errors with the Recycle bin.

I took off the WD Drive Security option and that seemed to fix everything: CHKDSK scanned the drive fine and reported it as NTFS with no problems. Also, the errors with the Recycle bin stopped appearing.

Google didn't find anything about this, so maybe it was just a 1-time fluke. But maybe not.

:)

 

WD External Hard Drive problem

The IDE one isn't working, but they're in cases. They're WD MyBook's. When taken out of the case, the one that doesn't show up is set at Cable Select, which is where I'm assuming it's supposed to be on a drive in an external enclosure? I'm currently searching for some data recovery software. Other then all of this, is there any other suggestions?

 

External Hard Drive (WD Elements) is visible in PW but not in explorer


followed steps..

the partition displayed as below...





as advised I selected "list".. and for a long time it was like this..

 

WD Elements external drive

Hi Edward,

To assist you further, I would like to ask some questions:

• Do you get any error message?
• How are you connecting your External Drive to your computer?

I suggest you to run the Hardware and Devices troubleshooter by following the steps provided below:

• Type “Troubleshooting” in search box and press Enter.
• Click on “View all” on the top left pane.
• Click on "Hardware and Devices" from the list and follow the prompts for troubleshooting.

Hope this helps. Keep us posted on the status for further assistance.

Thank you.