System doesn`t see portable hard drive

[miadsz]

Hello. I`ve got a problem with my portable hard drive. It is WD My Passport USB 3.0. When I plug it into the USB port, drive is working, I can feel the vibration, LED controller is blinking but also i can hear strange sound which I don`t know how to describe. And my system doesn`t see this device. Any ideas where is the problem?

 

[BoceifusJR]

Kinda hard to say from the description, but sometimes i have drives take a while to install themselves. Also just try another usb port too, sometimes you get a bad connection or a port won't work anymore. Otherwise try a reboot and see if it happens still.

 

[miadsz]

It`s not a problem with USB port, I`ve checked all of them. The drive sizzle if I can use such a word to describe

 

[BoceifusJR]

Is it overly hot? Or vibrating more than it should be? Could be something failing on the portable.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there miadsz,

Sorry that you are facing some issues with your WD drive. 🙁

Strange sounds are not really a good sign when it comes to external hard drives. Is it a grinding, beeping sound? Could you record it?
Is the drive under warranty? Do you have some important data stored on it?

I guess you can try something simple as just attaching the drive with a different usb cable to another system. Also, you can check whether the drive is recognized by Disk Management and Device Manager.

In case the drive is nowhere to be recognized and you've tried the things I've mentioned above, I would suggest you to contact a data recovery company in case the data stored on the drive is really important. You can check WD's Data Recovery Partners out: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=Tnl6gp

You can try to access the drive with some data recovery tool, in case the HDD is recognized by Disk Management: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html

After you've recovered your data, you can test the drive with WD's DLG(both short and extended tests) tool: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=Rd89wU

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD