WD My Passport Recovery on Mac: What To Do When Disk Drill Finds Files but They Will Not Open
Do not spend more time converting every recovered .gz file. A scan finding roughly the amount of data you remember is encouraging, but it does not prove that the underlying MP3, movie, photo, or ebook content was recovered intact. Test the source drive's stability first, then use one second-opinion recovery scan on a few known file types.
Why “Found” Does Not Always Mean “Usable”
The Mac user in this WD My Passport recovery case said Disk Drill found roughly the expected volume, some album thumbnails appeared, but the downloaded results would not open and many outputs had a .gz extension. The fact that some files had once been managed in iTunes does not by itself explain why recovered payloads are now unusable.
A recovery program can sometimes reconstruct names, entries, thumbnails, or fragments even when the file content they point to is incomplete or damaged. That is why a conversion attempt is the wrong next test: changing a filename or container does not restore missing source bytes.
Decide Whether the Drive Is Safe To Scan Again
If the WD My Passport clicks, disconnects, repeatedly disappears, reports the wrong capacity, or becomes extremely slow, stop DIY scanning. Those symptoms can indicate a hardware problem where repeated reads add risk.
If the drive is stable and macOS still detects it consistently, recover a small second-opinion sample to a different physical disk. DMDE recommends testing files with its Free Edition before purchase; it also notes that a file that is already damaged after free recovery will not become healthy simply because a paid license removes batch limits. You can use that principle to test a few recognizable MP3, JPEG, or MP4 files before committing to a large recovery.
Another GUI option for a stable, readable source is Recoverit Hard Drive Recovery, which supports external hard drives on Mac. Again, the useful test is whether previewable files are intact; save anything recovered to another drive, never back to the My Passport.
When To Stop Software Attempts
If two independent recovery methods both return the same important files as broken, or the drive becomes unstable during reads, stop treating this as a file-conversion problem. At that point, preserving the original drive and deciding whether the music, movies, photos, and ebooks justify professional recovery is safer than repeatedly rescanning it.