WD 4TB My Passport non-responsive

[Quattro Pete]

I've had this portable USB drive for a few years, rarely used, mainly for off-site backup. All of a sudden, when I plug it into a PC, the light on it just keeps blinking, but the drive is not visible under Windows. Disk Management under Windows does not see it. Tried MiniTool Partition Wizard - also no luck getting it to cooperate. Basically all disk-related utilities, including Windows Explorer, hang when I try to access this drive.

Anything else I can try?

Thanks!

 

[ctechbob]

I've this portable USB drive for a few years, rarely used, mainly for off-site backup. All of a sudden, when I plug it into a PC, the light on it just keeps blinking, but the drive is not visible under Windows. Disk Management under Windows does not see it. Tried MiniTool Partition Wizard - also no luck getting it to cooperate. Basically all disk-related utilities, including Windows Explorer, hang when I try to access this drive.

Anything else I can try?

Thanks!

Only thing else I would try is to remove the drive from the enclosure and either use a different SATA/USB adapter or mount it in a computer to see if windows will recognize it.

Is it a powered unit? (IE Has its own power supply), not uncommon for those to pack it in as well.

 

[LDM]

Pull it out of the enclosure and use a different USB bridge to determine if the drive is still good. If it hasn't been used much most likely the USB bridge failed and the drive is still good. I've had this happen with numerous drives over the years, 90% of the time its the USB bridge has failed, the rest its the HDD.

 

[OVERKILL]

A lot of these, the USB interface is integrated into the drive, so you can't try a different adapter. If that's the case, there's not a lot you can do if the disk doesn't show up.

 

[Quattro Pete]

There is a controller board that can be removed, but apparently WD installed some security chip in there that will only work with this particular drive, so swapping a controller board from another WD My Passport will not work.