LG Smart TV 'magically' recognizes unrecognizable external WD 4tb drv.. HOW? And why can't windows?

[Mike78j]

OK. I have a 2018 LG Smart TV model OLED65C8PUA.   The TV  'magically' recognizes and (badly) displays/ plays the 2gb of photos, videos and audio residing on my Western Digital 4TB My Passport  external hard drive I have. The problem is the TV is the ONLY device that WILL RECONIZE THE DRV! 8 diffirent computers running from Vista to Win 10 have given me 'DRV (x) is not accessable'. At one time the drv was password protected and it worked fine. The exact password was lost so I tried a number of variations and was able to finally unlock the drv and remove the password  using WD Utilities. It worked for a bit and I was able to copy out a few files using a Surface Pro/ Windows 10  but it stopped and now with that Surface Pro and the other windows machines  I get `D is not accessible. The parameter is incorrect'.  I even put it on a Samsung smart TV - none will read the drv, ONLY THE LG!  The LG also displays the DRV'S volume label and  content filenames as well. 

I want to copy these files before the drive fails as the catch here is the LG seems to produce one or two "unrecognized files' every time I use it and some of these videos are one-of family heirlooms! I want to avoid another $300 data recovery bill if possible. And if the LG can read it one would think there is a way forward.

Any suggestions will be most appreciated! 

[George Hofmeister]

Have you tried running Windows's System File Checker on the drive?

Alternatively find someone with a Linux system and see if that can read the drive as the OS tends to be a little more forgiving on reading problem hard drives.

[td47]

@Mike78j  How was the WD drive protected? Was it via a WD drive software protection (WD Security tools, encryption etc), or a Windows system protection like BITLOCKER?

If it was the WD Security tools, then MAYBE their own utilities MIGHT be able to unlock it properly. You say that it has removed the password, BUT has it then properly "unencrypted" it? If it was via BITLOCKER, then ONLY that same software could properly decrypt it.

Another possiblity is that the drive has been "unsafely" removed from a system, and now has a corrupted file system. If it was formatted as FAT32, then that is definitely a possibility, but an NTFS volume is less likely to suffer from this when unsafely removed from a USB connection . It could STILL be bad sectors, that were not fully written during a removal at some time previously, causing your issue.

Rather than spend a LOT of money on data recovery, I would recommend that you purchase and try a well respected utilty called SPINRITE, by security and sofware guru Steve Gibson, of GRC (Gibson Research Corporation). You can review it at the link below, and read the testimonials and decide if you want to try it. Many IT support specialists use this tool to recover bad drives and recover data.

link hidden, please login to view

Edited May 30, 2020 by td47
minor clarification

[td47]

@George Hofmeister you mentioned Sytem File Checker (SFC utility), but THAT is only designed to check the integrity of the Windows OS System Files. I think you meant to say "chkdsk" command. That will certainly help to see if the file system on there is in good shape or not, and if it has bad sectors. If the latter, see my post about the Spinrite utility.

Edited May 30, 2020 by td47
clarification

[George Hofmeister]

On 5/30/2020 at 3:10 PM, td47 said:

@George Hofmeister you mentioned Sytem File Checker (SFC utility), but THAT is only designed to check the integrity of the Windows OS System Files. I think you meant to say "chkdsk" command. That will certainly help to see if the file system on there is in good shape or not, and if it has bad sectors. If the latter, see my post about the Spinrite utility.

Hi @td47,

Yes you are of course correct I did get my utilities confused.

[RuskinF]

I have the same suggestion.

Try finding out what is wrong with the file system by running a file checker using Windows.

If Windows cannot check the drive then it means the filesystem on the drive is not Windows compatible.

Connect the drive to a Linux system and see what is the file system of the drive and how you can alter it or correct it.

[td47]

@RuskinF I agree that the disk needs a full filesystem integrity check, but I suspect that the underlying problem may be more than a compatibility issue. Reading the OP, I see "The exact password was lost so I tried a number of variations and was able to finally unlock the drv and remove the password  using WD Utilities. It worked for a bit and I was able to copy out a few files using a Surface Pro/ Windows 10  but it stopped". So that is why I asked the OP if the drive had been encrypted in some way (partially, or whole disk), with a WD utility, or BITLOCKER. However, since he was able to read SOME files at one point in time, on a Windows 10 machine, might suggest some curruption due to incorrect/unsafe removal several times, making the issue worse. If there ARE bad blocks/sectors, then the GRC SpinRite utility may be able to resurrect some of the initially unreadable parts.

[ruitertjelg]

Hi

did you ever try to connect to a Linux PC?

With a life-CD (Ubuntu) you may find that the filesystem is probably not windows-compatible.
WD Nas formats disks in Linux-format ext2 or higher.

Regards,
Jan

[Mike78j]

May I first belatedly (quite belatedly!) apoligize for my "late" response and thank everyone for the really thoughtful (as well as technically well-grounded) suggestions. The DRV issue was my very first post on this forum and, after reading your responses, it consider it a great start!  Almost a year-ago now, I put the drive in the closet and went to Saudi Arabia. Returned last week and... same problem, but havent had time to get into it yet. I don't have immediate access to a Linux machine or another LG so I'm going to take it ito a BestBuy and test it on one of their store displays. Not conclusive but, if the DRV it works,  a Linux approach will likely solve the problem.

Only thing is, yesterday my LG TV  (yeah.. that one) was running pixel refresh and suddenly went completly dead - no video, no audio. The Power LED DOES blink 3 times before it goes dead as well.

I'm looking for schematics and technical data now. Dang! Is there a LG hardware forum out there?

Again, many thanks

Michael