WD My Passport not showing up

I figured that was the problem. I wasn’t careful enough with that drive, for sure, and what you said I knew but didn’t heed.

Oh well. It’s an important lesson learned, if nothing less. I’ll just have to wait til solid state becomes cheap enough, then I’ll get a more durable drive.

What in the hell is the point of it being portable then?! =(

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I also have the same problem. the western digital passport drive is not showing now. the other day, i was able to load music and pictures into it.

so frustrating. what could be done?

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If you find a solution please let me know.  I thought my problem was from removing the harddrive to quickly from the USB port but I now think this problem is because it slipped of the CPU tower and fell about 12 to 16 inches to a carpeted floor while still attached to the computer.   Hope we find a solution to recover our data…   

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I’m definitely having the same problem with my Passport…I don’t think mine has had any types of bangs or anything like that.  I keep it in a padded old makeup bag.  I too am desperate to get my data off this thing.  Did anyone find a solution on how to get that done?

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OK, I’m a passport owner (several times over) PC, Mac and Linux OSs. Not an authorized tech but experienced enough. I’ve recovered three times now using Data Rescue  from Prosoft Engineering. You need another drive to recover to but it’s way WAY less expensive than a dedicated recovery service. That usually runs $350-1200

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My passport just started to do this as well and I have only used it like 4 times.  I agree that is absolutely ridiculous that this portable harddrive can’t sustain a fall to a carpet.  Why would I purchase a portable one then?  Does wd think that I am going to transport this around in a huge padded case?  Seriously!  Besides, this isn’t the first time this has happened to an external harddrive I’ve had from WD.  My other one was non-portable and sat on my desk and just stopped working one day.  If you look all over the internet, it appears to be a very common problem.  Time to switch to Seagate. 

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I am not able to access my picture and data files that have been stores on my external hard drive either.  Unfortunately, this is where I backed up all of my pictures and data.  For many things on this hard drive I have no other copies.

I recently took my external hard drive to Best Buy - Geek Squad to see if the files could be recovered without going thru a great expense.  The technician removed the drive from it’s case to see if he could assess the file directly but it only said  raw drive.  The technician has told us that my external hard drive has lost its partition table so now no computer can read from it.   It needs software to rebuild table to then read the hard drive.  Do you think this program would be able to rescue my data ??

  Other things I have tried:

  • connecting to different computers

  • connected external hard drive to computer using a new USB cable

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I’m having the same problem. Mine has never been dropped. I was in the middle of using it and it just suddenly stopped and now I can’t find it on the computer. It seems to me that a lot of people are having the same problem…wonder what’s going on.

can someone tell me where I can find a driver for windows 2000 pro for my passport essential se

There is no driver for Windows 2000 pro for the drive.  If you read the manual, Windows 2000 is not listed as a supported operating system.  As a matter of fact, Windows isn’t even listed at all.

I just bought the Passport Essential 500 GB and wanted to copy files over.  While registering, I was prompted to update the Firmware.  After downloading the Updater and executing the Update, the computer went to a ‘Restart’ mode and the next thing is that the computer cannot detect the Passport Essential. 

This is extremely disappointing.  Fortunately for me, it is my first day but definitely NOT good value what I paid for.  A turkey indeed…Worse, the support hotline does not work on weekends.

hello everyone i am going through the same nightmare and WD just left its customers to their own devices.

we invested a fortune in their company by buying their products so why couldn’t they find an answer once for all?

i spent sleepless nights trying to sort this out and recover all my works and private photos and videos.

why should i pay for data recovery service when i bought a produc that was working perfectly and then decide to stop working?

I WILL APPRECIATE IF SOMEONE that has managed to sort it out can give us a reply.thanks

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All I get it the option to back up or exit.  I have backed up already and can see that the pc part shows the name of my pc and that over 2,000 files are in there.  The problem is that it does not give me the option to retrieve!

So, how to I get my files back?  I do have another driver so could you go into more detail as to how I recover them with the other driver – i.e., step by step procedure?

Thanks,

C.

I had this problem as well with my passport, and this solution helped me rather well.

http://download.cnet.com/Tweak-UI/3000-2072_4-10002117.html

Follow that link and download the program, open it and follow these instructions:

Winsow Start ----> Tweak UI ----> Scroll down to “My computer” ----> Click “Drives” ----> Check mark the drive in which you are trying to locate.

This worked for me, and hopefully it works for all the rest of you who are having a simular problem.

This is indeed one of the most worthless devices i have ever bought in my whole life.

The story that it is because it might have dropped is complete bull**bleep**.

I have another drive for 2 years now that has always travelled with me and never ever had any problems, this WD piece of garbage i heve for 10 days now and has not been dropped whatsoever, yesterday it was ok and since today not a single computer is recognising it !!!

On the website there are only software updates and no complete software, but if the piece of garbage is not recognised at all how the hell can just an update help me then ???

I have copied around 200 GB on it and then cleaned the original pc where the data came from now leaving me with all the data gone.

This is a very expensive lesson, never ever buy anything of this brand in my whole life again !!!

Or, never, ever again leave yourself with no backup of your data.

Bill, I believe that that was what he was trying to do by setting up a set of files on the WD. Stop being such an smartass. As you can see not everyone here thinks that WD is reliable enough to backup your system with after what’s happened, right.

The problem here seems to be that the majority here, as well as I, have the problem with the WD My Passport just giving up. It seems like the symptoms are the same, not being recognized, and what we are trying to determine is how we can retrieve/restore our data from the defect harddrives and not to find a culprit or reason for this to have happened. We want to be solution oriented and not problem oriented in our discussion.

Please help!

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What a worthless and stupid reaction …

I wrote that i bought the **bleep** device to back up files from a laptop, then clean the laptop and put the important files back.

If i follow your worthless reaction a bit i should have bought a second external disc to back up all the files that i want to put on that worthless wd device, so in the end do everything double because wd is not capable of delivering a decent working device …

Like selling somebody a brand new Audi of 50.000 Euro and then advising him to buy a second one because the first one can break down any moment and stop working.

Seems wd is definately NOT the brand to go for if you want to secure any data whatsoever at all …

Best regards,

Eric.

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Huskyf1 wrote:

This is indeed one of the most worthless devices i have ever bought in my whole life.

The story that it is because it might have dropped is complete bull**bleep**.

I have another drive for 2 years now that has always travelled with me and never ever had any problems, this WD piece of garbage i heve for 10 days now and has not been dropped whatsoever, yesterday it was ok and since today not a single computer is recognising it !!!

On the website there are only software updates and no complete software, but if the piece of garbage is not recognised at all how the hell can just an update help me then ???

I have copied around 200 GB on it and then cleaned the original pc where the data came from now leaving me with all the data gone.

This is a very expensive lesson, never ever buy anything of this brand in my whole life again !!!

Okay, first of all, my intent was not to be a smartass.  So, if I came off that way, I apologize.  However, if you read the second to the last sentence of huskyf1’s post, he makes no mention of putting data back on the original pc, which means he no longer had a backup.  he only had his data on one drive.  Now, please understand that I’m still not being a smartass, but if I ever need to clean up my pc and then restore important data back to it, I never count on that data being put on just any one drive.  I always back up my data to two drives, at least, before cleaning up my pc like that.  So, yes, never own just one drive if you plan on commiting critical data to it.  I own Seagate drives.  I own WD drives.  I own the original Maxtor drives.  But I’ve never trusted my data to just any one of those drives.  The more, the better.  That, I had to learn the hard way.

Now, for helping.  I don’t see anywhere where huskf1 is either asking for help or listing what the problem is.  As a matter of fact, he’s still ranting about how worthless our drives are if he has to buy two of them.  The original poster of this thread dropped their passport a good distance, and damaged it so it wouldn’t work.  Do you honestly think they meant to?  Of course not.  For that reason, I make multiple backups on different drives.  Anything can happen.  Now if huskf1 would like to give us an idea of what’s happened to his drive - what he is or isn’t experiencing, and what he has or hasn’t done to troubleshoot it, I’d be more than happy to try and help figure out what may have happened. 

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