Having trouble opening WD My Passport 070A

[lilxcherry]

I have a WD My Passport that I've been trying to open on my Windows 7 computer. When I plug in the external drive, it shows "CD Drive WD SmartWare" in My Computer but not the removable drive where my files were stored. "My Passport 070A" also shows up in Devices & Printers as well as in my Device Manager. I also scanned the device's drive and everything is up to date.

Any idea on how I can access my removable drive files?

Update: I went into disk management (as i've seen in other threads to do) and see this:

Disk 1, Basic 465.11 GB, Online (when I click into its properties, it says this is the WD My Passport 070 USB Device)
200 MB Healthy (GPT Protective Partition)
464.70 GB
127 MB Unallocated

CD-ROM, CD Rom 0, WD SmartWare (G: ), CD-ROM, 668 MB, Online
668 MD UDF, Healthy (Primary Partition)

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to the community, @lilxcherry!

I'm sorry to hear about your access issues with the WD My passport drive. I'd recommend you post a screenshot from Disk Management as it would be a lot easier to understand what the issue could be. When you right-click on the WD My Passport volume there, do you see the option to Change drive letters & paths? If you do, then you should definitely try changing the drive letter assignment of the external drive. Hopefully, that will make it pop up in the File Explorer/My Computer properly. It might also be a good idea to try to open it from another PC/laptop around you and see how it will get detected by the other system.
As soon as you gain access to the files stored on the external HDD, back them up somewhere else immediately. This is how you will avoid any potential data loss.

Keep me posted.
SuperSoph_WD

 

[DR_Luke]

I see a lot of WD Passports with lots of issues, the most common is weak/damaged heads, bad sectors and firmware issues. I'm not saying that this is the case with yours, yet, but please keep that in mind as you proceed to diagnose your issue...you wouldn't want to push it too hard and make it worse.

I agree that a screenshot of Disk Management would be helpful. If you right-click on the 464.7GB partition, are you able to assign a drive letter to the drive?

Is it possible that the drive has a password set?

Was the drive initially setup on your windows 7 computer or another system? That is, are you sure it isn't Mac formatted?