WD Passport-Can find in Device Mgr, not in comp

itinoco

Honorable
Mar 1, 2012
1
0
10,510
Hello,

My WD passport is making a clicking noise and I already know that it needs to be pitched. I have pictures of a dear friend that passed away on it and I'd really like to recover the files. I looked on device manager and I can find it there. I saw on another thread that they suggested right clicking on computer and clicking on Manage. I then go to disk management and right click on my HD. When I click initalize disk it tells me that it is write protected. Basically..where do I go from here or what other steps can I do to make me able to recover the files.
 
IF it is under warranty and you plan to get it replaced I wouldn't suggest you follow the steps I put down below

Open the Casing, check what sort of an HDD is used inside, either remove the HDD inside and connect it straight onto a computers mobo as a secondary disc and try to salvage the data you want from it

Or
then remove the HDD from withing the casing and try a new cheap USB casing. But in my experience, whenever I have had HDDs with the clicking sound, I have always removed them and connected them to one of these USB casings and then kept moving them with my hand while they were connected to the pc to salvage the data from them, that worked most of the time but the life that they had was certainly reduced tremendously after that sort of a recovery option.