How do I recover data from WP Passport? Power supply is good, disk does not spin

[AtaliAwa]

My old XP PC suddenly stopped recognizing my WD Passport 500G external hard drive. The power supply seems to be good (passport LED is lit) but I can't feel/hear the disk spinning up. Any idea how I get my pictures back?

 

[ktownmike]

Chances are the drive is toast, recovery companies are out there but just for kicks try unplugging it and waiting at least 5 minutes, then hook it up to a different computer.

 

[AtaliAwa]

Thanks... I'll give it a try.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

I've seen this quite a bit with these things. The spindle motor has most likely siezed. If there is data that must be retrieved you'll have to take it to a recovery service ($$$) and even then there's no guarantee that they'll be able to recover anything.

 

[AtaliAwa]

Hardware vendor? WD doesn't want to address the issue. They refer you to independent recovery providers, all have which seem to want a blank check up front.

 

[ktownmike]

I take it another computer did not work. I have a wd 750 gig win 7 will not recognize but xp has no problem.a new drive soon for backups and will recover old data via xp