WD My Passport 2TB

[Sicknero]

I bought this USB drive a few months ago and it's been working fine until today.

Now when I connect it, it shows up in Windows Explorer (W7 Ultimate) but not properly, as shown here (Local Disk F) -

I can't open it in Explorer, and if I right-click it Explorer hangs and then restarts. The drivers are all present and correct, and the drive shows up in Devices and Printers, but if I try to open Disk Management it just says "Connecting to Virtual Disk Service" endlessly and shows no drives at all. Note also the progress bar in the Address Bar of Explorer, which gets almost to the end and then sticks.

I've tried all of the software solutions mentioned on this site and others, but none of them are able to read the drive. I've tried numerous freeware partition managers, e.g. Paragon, EaseUs, MiniTool, etc etc ... some of them fail to read the drive at all and just hang, others see the drive but report it as Unformatted, or just "Bad". None of them are able to access or format it. I've tried TestDisk (can't read it) and "Lifeguard Diagnostics" which I downloaded from the Western Digital website. That refuses to even run until I disconnect the drive.

The LED on the drive itself is continuously flashing through all of this.

When I reboot with the drive connected, it shows up in boot options.

I've tried it on my x64 laptop, my x86 desktop, in MiniXP and with a couple of different Linux Live boot CD's. It's the same in all of those.

So, is it a lost cause..? I don't hold out much hope, as reading through other threads/comments on the topic of these drives it seems to be a dead-end problem, but I thought I'd post anyway having nothing to lose really.

Thanks.

 

[mike789]

Oh its no big deal, you just go to the store and they give you a new one. It happened to me twice this year with a 2 TB essential. They must be very sensitive these wd drives

 

[Sicknero]

Oh its no big deal, you just go to the store and they give you a new one. It happened to me twice this year with a 2 TB essential. They must be very sensitive these wd drives

Thanks. Thing is I bought it in the UK but don't live there and no idea when I'll be back next.

It's about half full of stuff which isn't irreplaceable, but if anyone has any new ideas of how I might be able to rescue it then it would save me a lot of time and hassle : )

 

[alwintom]

Try another cable.
Also when you connect it, do you get the 'Needs formating before use' dialogue box?

Another option is to connect it on another machine running Linux. But first make sure the cable is alright.

 

[Sicknero]

Try another cable.
Also when you connect it, do you get the 'Needs formating before use' dialogue box?

Another option is to connect it on another machine running Linux. But first make sure the cable is alright.

Thanks for the suggestions. Yes I've tried a couple of different cables that I know to be working, no joy there.

I don't have Linux installed anywhere but I do have a couple of Live CD's which I can try it with. Failing that I'll try installing a distro. I'm not at all familiar with Linux but I was thinking it can't access NTFS drives?

When I connect the drive in W7 I get no message at all, other than when I tried uninstalling the USB drivers and they re-installed with no problem.

All that happens is that the LED on the drive blinks away and I get the Explorer view that I posted in my OP. Disk Management doesn't work at all until I disconnect the drive, and trying to access it by double click or right click causes Explorer to hang and then restart.

I'll certainly try the Linux idea anyway, and post back later to say whether it helped at all. I gather that these WD drives are somewhat prone to this so this thread might be of help to others.

Thank you.

 

[alwintom]

I should have asked this earlier: Have you tried connecting this to another PC/Laptop (any OS)?

If the HDD works there (or not), try this method.
http://www.mindfane.com/2011/07/external-usb-harddisk-not-detected-by.html

I had an external STA to USB converter, which frequently became undetectable in Windows 7, The above method helped me in that situation.

 

[Sicknero]

I should have asked this earlier: Have you tried connecting this to another PC/Laptop (any OS)?

If the HDD works there (or not), try this method.
http://www.mindfane.com/2011/07/external-usb-harddisk-not-detected-by.html

I had an external STA to USB converter, which frequently became undetectable in Windows 7, The above method helped me in that situation.

No joy with Linux or with the process in the link you posted. Thanks for the suggestions anyway.

 

[alwintom]

Sad to hear that.

Anyway, try the following:

Sicne no OS could detect the HDD there could be a structural defects in your HDD. There are certain tools whcih can fix these types of errors.

If the data inside the HDD is important, make sure to make a clone of the disk (there are many disk cloning utilities out there) and save it some place safe.

Some of the tools that I recommend are:
DO NOT RUN THE DSKCHK utility provided with Windows. Sometimes it does more harm than good.
iRecover - For recovering files
DiskPatch - For fixing the disk

The developers of above tools have a forum at www.diydatarecovery.nl/forum/
You can ask for their advice as well. The developers will answer your question and tell you which tools better for you.

 

[ernestcheung]

hi may I ask have you finally found a working solution? I encountered exactly the same problem

 

[Sicknero]

hi may I ask have you finally found a working solution? I encountered exactly the same problem

Hi, sorry for taking so long to reply.

To answer your question, no. I've tried many different suggestions but as of yet nothing has worked. I'm reluctant to throw the drive away so it's still sitting on my shelf but to all intents I've given up on it.

I hope you have better luck than I did : )