Western Digital (WD) Hard Drive Data Recovery

Western Digital – now trading simply as WD – makes some of the most widely used internal and external hard drives in the UK. We recover data from failed WD drives of every generation, from older WD Caviar models to current WD Red Pro NAS drives and Ultrastar data-centre drives above 30TB.

WD’s flash business became a separate company, SanDisk, in 2025. WD-branded SSDs such as WD_BLACK and WD Blue NVMe drives are covered on our SanDisk page and our SSD recovery page.

Full WD Model & Part Number Lists

Look up your exact drive: WD internal hard drives (Blue, Black, Purple, Gold, Ultrastar) · WD external drives (My Passport, Elements, My Book) · WD SSDs (WD_BLACK, WD Blue, WD Red) · WD NAS drives & My Cloud.

WD Drives We Recover

Range / family	Example models & notes
WD Blue & WD Black (HDD)	Desktop and laptop drives, e.g. WD10EZEX, WD20EZAZ, WD40EZAZ, WD10SPZX, WD20SPZX, WD4005FZBX.
WD Red, Red Plus & Red Pro	NAS drives, e.g. WD40EFAX (SMR), WD40EFZX, WD80EFZZ, WD120EFBX and Red Pro up to 26TB (WD260KFGX).
WD Purple & Purple Pro	Surveillance drives used in CCTV DVRs and NVRs, e.g. WD40PURZ, WD84PURZ, WD221PURP.
WD Gold & Ultrastar	Enterprise helium drives – Ultrastar DC HC530, HC550, HC560, HC570, HC580, HC590 and the high-capacity HC680/HC690 series. SAS and SATA; many 20TB+ models use OptiNAND.
External & portable	My Passport, My Passport Ultra, My Passport for Mac, Elements Portable and Desktop, Easystore, My Book and My Book Duo, WD_BLACK P10/D10 game drives.
Network storage	My Cloud Home, My Cloud EX2 Ultra, EX4100, PR4100 and older My Book Live units.
Legacy & HGST	WD Caviar, Scorpio, Raptor and VelociRaptor, plus HGST drives – see Hitachi / HGST.

Common WD Faults

• Clicking or “ticking” from failed heads, often after a drop
• Slow, freezing or partially readable drives with degraded heads or bad sectors
• Firmware module damage (the drive spins but is not identified correctly)
• SMR rebuild failures on WD Red drives in NAS arrays
• USB port or bridge board damage on My Passport and Elements drives
• Lost access after a password was set with WD Security / WD Discovery
• Deleted files, formatted volumes and lost partitions

A Note on My Passport and My Book Encryption

Before you send your device – five things to avoid

• Switch the device off and leave it off – every power cycle can make physical damage worse
• Do not run CHKDSK, Disk First Aid, fsck or recovery software on a drive that clicks, beeps or is slow
• Do not open the drive or swap the circuit board – modern boards hold drive-specific adaptive data
• Do not reinstall the operating system or initialise the disk when prompted
• Keep liquid-damaged devices unpowered and bring them in as quickly as possible

Frequently asked questions