WD My Passport 0730 issue

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

Hello!

I have this WD My Passport 0730 external drive a friend of mine gave me because it wasn’t working anymore. I’m trying to fix it but I don’t know how.

When I plug it in, you hear the familiar Windows sound you hear whenever you plug a USB device in. However, after that the hard drive doesn’t show up in My Computer. I checked Device Management (devmgmt.msc) and the My Passport 0730 actually shows up under Disk Drives as “WD My Passport 0730 USB Device”.

When I go to Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) it’s absolutely nowhere to find. I have tried using the WD Data LifeGuard but the only hard drive that shows up there is the Seagate internal hard drive of my laptop. Seeing as it doesn’t show up in Disk Management, I can’t try to change the letter assigned to the drive, nor can I format it. I also tried installing drivers and the Firmware Updater but they don’t recognise the drive.

Every couple of minutes the USB removal sound of Windows plays, followed by the USB plugin sound. It occasionally shows up in My Computer as “Local drive” and says it has to be formatted to use, but when I click OK, nothing happens and I can’t access the drive either. A few minutes later the drive disappears again.

The light on the external drive itself works, and you can feel that the hard drive itself is working as well.

I hope I have given you plenty of information regarding this problem, and I sincerely hope someone is able to help me out.

Thank you so much in advance!

Kind regards,

Mawty

2

Hello,

Try replacing the USB cable and make sure the replacement cable is not longer than the original one. also make sure the drive is plugged in directly into the USB port. Avoid any USB hubs. If WD DLG still does not recognizes it then it means it is defective and needs to be replaced.

3

Sorry to say: If it experienced a head crash IE… it was dropped or bumped hard while running and the head hit the disk surface and scratched it; you’re not going to fix it. The disk platter it self and head/s would need to be replaced and the heads re-aligned, which takes precision tools, and an O-scope along with a very clean environment. One grain of dust and it’ can be a do over. You’d also have to know what you’re doing; repair manual.

I was a factory trained Tech for WD and CDC drives.