WD My Passport Failure

[Bill McNeal]

I have an WD My Passport external USB drive. While backing up my important laptop data to it under Win 7, it froze. I've tried rebooting repeatedly without success.

The drive lights up when I connect it, and I hear it spin. It shows up under My Computer and the Device Manager, which shows no yellow triangles. I have tried uninstalling/reinstalling the device and disabling/enabling it under Device Manager.

But when I try to click on it on Explorer, it freezes. It's as if Windows trying to open it but it doesn't respond. I don't have another PC to test the drive on, but I connected it to my router and it wasn't visible on my network.

Any other steps I can take to recover the drive and data? Would something like Recuva work or would you recommend other steps?

Thanks!

 

[scout_03]

see if data lifueguard diagnostic detect it this is the software wd use .

 

[Bill McNeal]

Thanks for this suggestion. It shows up as a logical drive under the Data Lifeguard utility but I can't highlight it or select it to do anything.

 

[scout_03]

this external is still under warranty you could rma it id not see if you could take it out and plug it in as second hdd in a pc it could be the enclosure connector that is defective also did you try another usb cable and doess it connect in e-sata .

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there Bill McNeal,

As scout_03 already suggested, you should start with something simple as just changing the USB cable as well as trying the drive on another system.
If the issue persists, it will not hurt to try some data recovery tool. Though, as WD's DLG tool can't access the drive, the data recovery tool might not be able to do so as well.
If nothing works, you could try running the chkdsk command: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee872425.aspx
Keep in mind that if this issue is caused by bad sectors, this command could result in data loss on these particular sectors.

If after all of this you can't access the drive in any way, then most probably there is something wrong with the enclosure. In this case, you may need to contact a data recovery company.

You can check WD's Data Recovery Partners out: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=bWEUN3

D_Know_WD

 

[Bill McNeal]

I tried the DLG tool and it takes a while (15 minutes) but finally it recognizes the drive. I get the feeling that the problem is that Win 7 has a hard time reading or recognizing the drive to begin with. But data is accessible once DLG recognizes it.

The problem comes back when I restart the computer. I seem to have to run DLG first every time to get the drive recognized by Windows. What should I do with DLG to get it to fix the drive?

Thanks!

 

[scout_03]

did you try it with another cable or on another system that could tell if there is something with the enclosure .

 

[D_Know_WD]

After the drive gets recognized after using DLG, you should back up the data stored on it.
Apart from that, what are the DLG results? Is there something wrong with the drive?
You should try the drive on another system(another cable possibly) in order to rule out(or not) your system as a possible cause.

D_Know_WD