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WD My Passport External HD Failure

Tags:
  • Hard Drives
  • Western Digital
  • HD
  • Storage
Last response: in Storage
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January 23, 2013 2:37:23 AM

I have a WD My Passport 0740 500GB external HD that stopped working just 2-3 months after I started using it. And it filled to the brim, too. I tried taking it to the local IT store to recover the data, but no luck. ( PS, they opened the casing, so warranty is void).The light on the HD turns on. The Hard Drive is recognized. But it does not show up on Windows Explorer (windows 7 Ultimate). I've read a number of forum posts regarding the issue and checked that:

a) the HD does not show up in that BIOS.
b) when I open disk management, the HD does show up as disk1, but with no bar.

At this point i've given up on recovering the data. But if the HD proves salvagable in any way, I'd be gratefull.

More about : passport external failure

January 23, 2013 2:54:42 AM

CCleaner from piriform.com is worth a shot. Download it run the drive wipe on it but tell it to only wipe the free space which i realized may not be much but again, its worth a try. If that's a no-go, then i would just tell it to wipe the entire drive, sure you'd lose the info on it but it might save the drive.
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January 23, 2013 10:31:48 PM

Your probably boned, but go ahead and try a format with windows (right click, select format from drop down menu). This will erase all data on your HDD.
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January 23, 2013 11:36:34 PM

The Hard Disk doesn't show up in 'My Computer' to begin with!

Also, I tried turning on the computer with the HD plugged in, then opened Disk Management. It asked to select Partition type for Disk 1. But on selecting both cases, MBR and GPT (one at a time), I got the same error message:

'The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.'
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a c 326 G Storage
January 24, 2013 4:13:44 AM

UVCView is correctly detecting the USB-SATA bridge IC on the drive, but the drive behind the bridge has a physical problem. I presume that Hard Disk Sentinel is reporting the model number of the drive, eg WD5000BMVV.
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February 3, 2013 2:03:22 AM

So, what now?
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Best solution

a c 326 G Storage
February 3, 2013 2:16:40 AM

It doesn't look like a board fault, so I can't see any option other than professional data recovery.
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February 10, 2013 1:29:40 PM

Best answer selected by WolfsBane.
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August 1, 2013 6:23:13 AM

WolfsBane said:
The Hard Disk doesn't show up in 'My Computer' to begin with!

Also, I tried turning on the computer with the HD plugged in, then opened Disk Management. It asked to select Partition type for Disk 1. But on selecting both cases, MBR and GPT (one at a time), I got the same error message:

'The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.'


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September 29, 2013 2:44:47 AM

Have you recovered ur drive? I face the same issue as yours,do help me na?

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February 14, 2014 6:35:36 PM

My WD passport is not recognized too, like yours, the light in the left side is blinking and the hard drive is making a sound ,,



how we fix it.

please help me to fix my WD passport.....................

please reply immediately

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March 2, 2014 5:12:16 AM

I've got this exact same problem as well! There is a white light which keeps flashing (to show it is on) and when plugged into the laptop/computer, it doesn't show up under any categories? However, the computer does read it as it makes the noise which is made when a functional USB is inserted. I have a black WD my Passport USB 3.0 compatible with USB 2.0. ANY help would be so much appreciated!
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March 31, 2014 11:09:26 PM

Hey Guys,
Today I talked to those bullshit people(WD), the same problem occurred to me also and the only solution is hiring a third party professional data recovery company (which costs heavy bucks).

I cannot understand, if the hard disk failure happens, the only responsible is the company for ur data loss. so why dont they provide the data recovery service too.

its totally bullshit....

angry guy
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May 8, 2014 7:17:22 AM

Same BS here. Tried all the above solutions but to no effect.
Had the HD for almost 3 years, never a problem. Doesn't make any sense what so ever :( 
Particularly frustrating that this does not seem like a fluke error but happens to quite a lot of unlucky souls.

The whole reason I bought an HD in the first place was to create a backup for all my files in a save way in case my laptop crashed... F me

Thanks WD
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May 16, 2014 4:39:28 PM

I had the same problem with my WD My Passport Ultra 1 TB HDD. I was moving a file into the drive and the device hung. I cancelled the move and, thereafter, I lost the drive. I rebooted my PC and plugged in my drive. The light the drive was flashing, but I cannot see my drive in the Windows Explorer. I panicked and went looking for a solution and came upon this thread. I experienced what the other people here were experiencing and decided to work it out myself when no one here had the solution to the problem. Good news. I got lucky.

My best guess was that the drive was still working because of the flashing light, but it was running very slow because of a file system error. I decided to wait it out until I see the drive in the Windows Explorer. A hour later, a drive icon pops up in the Windows Explorer, but with no information about the drive. The drive was assigned a drive letter, but it had no name or size. I clicked the drive icon and I get to see the drive’s directory. I could start copying my files to another drive at this point, but, since the drive was running very slow, I decided against it. But if you have a critical file that you need to get back, do copy it now. The recovery process that will follow next will not guarantee success or that that file will still be viable. Remember it will be slow and may look as if the process hung. You need to be patient. Do write anything into the drive! It could worsen the problem.

Now, on to the recovery process. Go back to drive icon in the Windows Explorer. Right-click on the icon and click Properties > Tools > Check Now. Check the 2 boxes in the Check Now window and click Start. Again, this will be a slow process and will take some time. Mine took 3 days to finish. You need to be patient and leave the PC alone to finish the job. And as I said before, I got lucky. I have my drive and files back!

I hope you have the same luck!
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May 22, 2014 5:48:03 AM

So yea, my external hard drive ( WD elements 2tb ) was working perfectly fine yesterday, nothing happened since (didnt drop it or anything) and now it's not working anymore. Plug it in the computer it detects it I can safely remove hardware etc but wont show up in my computer. The hard drive still lights up, weird noises then after a while the noises stop but HD still lighted up. Cant detect it in disk management. Anyone found a way!? Please help got 1 year of pictures from travelling around the world :( 


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May 30, 2014 1:26:00 AM

zoopreme said:
So yea, my external hard drive ( WD elements 2tb ) was working perfectly fine yesterday, nothing happened since (didnt drop it or anything) and now it's not working anymore. Plug it in the computer it detects it I can safely remove hardware etc but wont show up in my computer. The hard drive still lights up, weird noises then after a while the noises stop but HD still lighted up. Cant detect it in disk management. Anyone found a way!? Please help got 1 year of pictures from travelling around the world :( 




Read and follow my solution. It works. Plug your drive it your computer and wait. It will take a long time before your computer sees the drive and identifies it. I mean a really long time. Leave it plugged in for a day if you have to. When it does identify it, follow the next steps that I mention before.
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June 4, 2014 6:51:36 AM

I have 2 x 2TB Western digital passport drives connected to my laptop. Both are USB 3.0 compatible.

One of them NEVER shows up (Not in Device manager etc) if I plug it into a USB 3.0 port when the other drive is already connected.

The temporary fix is to simply unplug it and move it to a USB 2.0 port I have on the laptop. This works 100% of the time. Hopefully some of you have that extra port as well as this will make life easy for you. But you get the slower transfer rate of USB 2.0. Not a big deal to me.

However, THERE IS a fix out there that I can't find right now. It was a great response which used the diskpart utility to fix the issue. WITHOUT reformatting your drive or losing any data. I'm still looking for it because I forgot to book mark the site....doh!! When I find it I'll come back and post a link.
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June 4, 2014 6:58:51 AM

This is weird. After plugging the drive into the USB 2 port. I moved it back to USB 3.0 and voila BOTH WD drives are visible and assigned drive letters.

Not a fix but at least I can see my drive.
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June 7, 2014 5:46:18 AM

Update: I had to remove the external drive and let it find it again. Once I did that and went back to the Check now part, it clearly showed the "start" going. However, a few mins in I get an error that says "can't check drive while it's in use"... wtf !!! I am not using it for anything other then this check ... any suggestions?

Diligent:

I followed your directions and it sorta worked! I can see my external hard drive, I have managed to move my critical files (took a long time but worth it). I am not at your recovery process. When I check off the 2 boxes under Check Now and click start ... nothing happens. How do you know if it is checking your hard drive .. does a pop-up box appear?




Diligent said:
I had the same problem with my WD My Passport Ultra 1 TB HDD. I was moving a file into the drive and the device hung. I cancelled the move and, thereafter, I lost the drive. I rebooted my PC and plugged in my drive. The light the drive was flashing, but I cannot see my drive in the Windows Explorer. I panicked and went looking for a solution and came upon this thread. I experienced what the other people here were experiencing and decided to work it out myself when no one here had the solution to the problem. Good news. I got lucky.

My best guess was that the drive was still working because of the flashing light, but it was running very slow because of a file system error. I decided to wait it out until I see the drive in the Windows Explorer. A hour later, a drive icon pops up in the Windows Explorer, but with no information about the drive. The drive was assigned a drive letter, but it had no name or size. I clicked the drive icon and I get to see the drive’s directory. I could start copying my files to another drive at this point, but, since the drive was running very slow, I decided against it. But if you have a critical file that you need to get back, do copy it now. The recovery process that will follow next will not guarantee success or that that file will still be viable. Remember it will be slow and may look as if the process hung. You need to be patient. Do write anything into the drive! It could worsen the problem.

Now, on to the recovery process. Go back to drive icon in the Windows Explorer. Right-click on the icon and click Properties > Tools > Check Now. Check the 2 boxes in the Check Now window and click Start. Again, this will be a slow process and will take some time. Mine took 3 days to finish. You need to be patient and leave the PC alone to finish the job. And as I said before, I got lucky. I have my drive and files back!

I hope you have the same luck!


Diligent said:
zoopreme said:
So yea, my external hard drive ( WD elements 2tb ) was working perfectly fine yesterday, nothing happened since (didnt drop it or anything) and now it's not working anymore. Plug it in the computer it detects it I can safely remove hardware etc but wont show up in my computer. The hard drive still lights up, weird noises then after a while the noises stop but HD still lighted up. Cant detect it in disk management. Anyone found a way!? Please help got 1 year of pictures from travelling around the world :( 




Read and follow my solution. It works. Plug your drive it your computer and wait. It will take a long time before your computer sees the drive and identifies it. I mean a really long time. Leave it plugged in for a day if you have to. When it does identify it, follow the next steps that I mention before.


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June 28, 2014 3:34:28 PM

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July 6, 2014 3:07:16 AM

i pluck my failure passport into ChromeBook and it works!! i backup everything online!
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July 6, 2014 8:06:35 PM

Facing the same problem as the rest. Using the solution provided by Diligent. Would like to ask if I need the admin rights during the recovery process?
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July 8, 2014 9:35:16 AM

I can only but agree with whoever said to plug in the drive and wait until it recognizes it.

I am currently dealing with TWO failed external WD drives, one is a 2011 1TB my passport SE that all of a sudden became slow and unusable. It also was unrecognized by the OS. I was contemplating using the freezer trick as I thought it was a temperature issue that stopped it working after a short while. Instead, a few days later, in an attempt to try to get into it with a data recovery program, I left it plugged in (light was flashing) and waited almost 30 minutes and it appeared. I was able to pull all the data off it (except for a couple of bad sectors). S.M.A.R.T program has warned me that it is failing.

Second drive is a 250gb My Passport, this also was plugged in after not having used it in a year, and it turned on fine. Unplugged it, plugged it in later in the day and it was unrecognizable. It shows up on Disk utility, but it is unmounted. So I could only get into it with a data recovery program. I was able to recover everything, but obviously all file structure/names are wiped. I guess better than nothing.

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July 9, 2014 11:59:14 PM

Guys,

This MAY be the solution to all your problems.

I was in the exact same dilemma when my HDD would power on but not be acknowledged on my Win8.1 laptop.

Turns out, i had defined a few network drives on my laptop. Just as C: is default for your OS, D: and E: were partitions I created. In the past (when I did not define a network drive "I:") my WD would load as Drive I:, but seeing that this drive had now been defined as a network path, WD wasn't smart enough to create a new drive to launch the HDD.

SOLUTION: Rename your network drives starting from Z (backward). I did that, and bingo - I had my 'WD Password Unlocker' running as good as new.

Hope this helps.

Thank me at josephjohn02@gmail.com
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August 9, 2014 9:00:23 PM

WolfsBane said:
I have a WD My Passport 0740 500GB external HD that stopped working just 2-3 months after I started using it. And it filled to the brim, too. I tried taking it to the local IT store to recover the data, but no luck. ( PS, they opened the casing, so warranty is void).The light on the HD turns on. The Hard Drive is recognized. But it does not show up on Windows Explorer (windows 7 Ultimate). I've read a number of forum posts regarding the issue and checked that:

a) the HD does not show up in that BIOS.
b) when I open disk management, the HD does show up as disk1, but with no bar.

At this point i've given up on recovering the data. But if the HD proves salvagable in any way, I'd be gratefull.


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August 9, 2014 9:15:43 PM

I had read all of the horror stories concerning the WD external HD. I was unable to read the drive and my computer (win7) kept instructing me to initialize the Passport. I tried all of the advice given in all the forums I searched with no success but alot of time infront of my computer praying I would not loose the information contained within (35g). My passport had failed me two years earlier and I put it to the side and at times would hope for a miracle and attach it to the computer. NO LUCK! Last evening I searched for any program and was specific about using search words that described an external disc not recognized by my computer and PRESTO I was introduced to "EaseUs". I downloaded the free trial and it activated my external HD without it being recognized under mycomputer. As I type with joyful strikes to the keyboard my information is being recovered after two years of thinking I lost it all. I used a coupon found on line and my cost was the best $44.97 ever spent to ease my mind and regain my files. I am not a computer wiz nor did I have the money to takes my HD to a professional. It was a simple and long process but I enjoyed every time the program racked up another file. Additionally I DO NOT WORK FOR NOR DO I HAVE ANY CONNECTION TO THIS COMPANY except as a customer.
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August 16, 2014 1:52:43 PM

My WD My Passport 500 gb decided to crash while I was traveling, having tons of travel photos, songs I've been working on etc. I'm using a Mac. It didn't show up in finder, but in disc utility. I did a check, it said it needs to be repaired. Tried to repair, but got the message "your hard drive is fubar" (or something like that).

I just downloaded the firmware update from the WD homepage. It worked. I could access my files again, and I just saved them.

TIP: UPDATE FIRMWARE!
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August 20, 2014 5:22:54 AM

I had the unrecognized drive message and it didn't show up in disk management either. It was a bad USB3.0 cable. Try a known working USB3.0 cable before taking drastic measures.

Luckily, I had a second known working WD MyPassport drive I could test with so I used that good cable on both drives and they both worked fine. Tried the bad cable on both and they both got the unrecognized drive message. I think I bent the cable slightly at one point and it caused the problem. NEW CABLE FIXED MY ISSUE.
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September 1, 2014 5:24:35 AM

Did you find any solution? I am facing the same problem.
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September 24, 2014 5:49:29 AM

Pitler said:
My WD My Passport 500 gb decided to crash while I was traveling, having tons of travel photos, songs I've been working on etc. I'm using a Mac. It didn't show up in finder, but in disc utility. I did a check, it said it needs to be repaired. Tried to repair, but got the message "your hard drive is fubar" (or something like that).

I just downloaded the firmware update from the WD homepage. It worked. I could access my files again, and I just saved them.

TIP: UPDATE FIRMWARE!


This worked for me on my 1tb drive. Thanks heaps...
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October 5, 2014 1:23:50 PM

HI
I have a WD 1 TB HDD, the device is giving me an option to unlock it but after that it doesn't open the drive. a drive comes up which looks diff than others ( c,d & e) and when i open it, its blank. I go to disk fragmentation it shows by drive there but can't do anything there.
I go to properties and it shows memory full and data size 0. Tried data recovery free softwares, they were not able to find the driver on the computer.
Light is on, it vibrates everything i fine ..it just doesn't work.

I have my comp data in it and if i dont fix it i am fired for sure...I boss said a straight NO to data recovery as it expensive.
please help buddy....i am in a very very bad situation...

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less than a minute ago

did you you fix it? i have the exactly same problem but didn't find the solution
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