[Waynesworld]

I have a Wester Digital external USB My Passport Hard Drive that stopped working.  I'm wondering what I can do to try to get my data.

 

When I hook the usb cable to my computer the light on the HD blinks, you can hear it spin and a clicking noise.

I

 get a pop up that says new hardwar detected or something like that at the bottorm right corner of my computer but when you open My Computer it does not show the hard drive.

 

Aslo if I hook up this hard drive to my DVD players usb port it also does not recognize it.

 

I took another cable from another passport that I have and hooked it to the non functionong HD to test the cable... Same thing happened, so its not the cable.

 

What if anything can be done?

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Hi,

The clicking noise is worrying as it can signify the drive has died, if so there is little chance of you recovering any data without sending the drive away to data recovery specialists which is usually expensive.

Can you open the case easily to actually remove the drive from it?

If so, with an adapter you can try connecting the drive directly to the computer and see if it will work then, just in case there is something wrong with the enclosure itself.

However, if nothing comes from that, the drive itself has died and not much you can do yourself after that.

 

Nev.

[Plastic Nev]

Hi,

The clicking noise is worrying as it can signify the drive has died, if so there is little chance of you recovering any data without sending the drive away to data recovery specialists which is usually expensive.

Can you open the case easily to actually remove the drive from it?

If so, with an adapter you can try connecting the drive directly to the computer and see if it will work then, just in case there is something wrong with the enclosure itself.

However, if nothing comes from that, the drive itself has died and not much you can do yourself after that.

 

Nev.

[Waynesworld]

Ok.. Today I have hooked the HD up to my desktop at work with the same cable.  As soon as I connected it I get a message searching for divers for the WD ...... or something like that then I get the message Software for this devie has succesfuily been installed at it list the WD My Passport device but when I go to my computer it still does not list the HD and the light on the HD continously blinks.

 

it is not making the clicking noise either.

 

Also after taking the HD out of the case it does not appear that there is another way of hooking the HD up other than the USB cable. The USB port is made onto the HD.

[Plastic Nev]

Hi, You can disconnect the hard drive from that cable and you should then see the normal row of either IDE or SATA pins, you can then buy an adapter to plug in and connect to a USB port, or if there is a spare SATA port and power lead you can connect directly to the motherboard. If not, and the computer has a SATA type CD/DVD drive those connections can be used temporarily.

 

If the drive is a SATA type, the connection pins will look like this.

 

 

However, having now tried the drive on more than one other computer I am afraid there is little hope, however a make or break approach is to slap the drive onto a hard surface with moderate force, in other words, enough to dislodge a stuck read head, but not too much to put dents in things.

 

Nev.

[Waynesworld]

I have taken the HD out of the case and it does not look like a typical HD to where you can hook up a cable... Here is a pic of it.

 

[Plastic Nev]

That has caught me by surprise, by the fact I can make out USB on the label I can only assume it is a drive made specifically for USB direct connection and to be honest I haven't seen one like that before.

However it does make it difficult to connect to anything else.

 

However I can only suggest putting it back together, try the not too hard a sharp shock treatment and then try it again.

Considering it doesn't actually show up in the right places it isn't really any point trying any sort of drive checks as they do at least need it to show up.

 

I wonder if anyone else has any idea's about this as I was hoping it could be connected without the original cable just to rule that out.

 

The only other thing is to see if a repair shop has any equipment to at least test it, they might only make a small charge, or even nothing in the hope you will buy a new one.

 

Nev.