Another Drive Failure?

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

Hi, My Passport drive stopped responding yesterday. Initially, I could not see it at all on my computer, I did check disk management as well. I tried reboot, different computers, different USB cable, etc…

Today I can see the drive listed as my passport 070 A in the device manager, and I can also see the drive letter listed, and the smartware virtual drive, but still cannot access or see any filesd on the disk.

I have tried disk check but get message windows cannot access disk.  Drive shows as empty with no free space or used space.

The entire time the light has been lit on the drive, and when you first plug in it flashes for a few.

Any advice I have missed?

I am afraid this is another failure, which **bleep** since I just got this as a replacement for the previously failed drive. Are these drives that bad, or is this a coincidence? I have had my other external hard drive by another manufacturer for over a year and a half with no failures. In reading this forum, it looks like this happens all too frequently. I assume the USB connection is the weak link from all the reading.  

2

Have you tried this so far?? how long have you had this drive?

Try this! Error check. I am running windows xp so I hope this helps you

  1. Open “My Computer” and right-click on the icon for the drive that is to be checked.
  2. In the context menu that opens, choose “Properties”.
  3. Click the “Tools” tab at the top of the Properties window.
  4. In the “Error-checking” section, click the button “Check now”.
  5. A box showing the options for running Chkdsk is then available.

Generally, the option “Automatically fix file system errors” should be chosen for routine checks. If serious disk problems are suspected, the option “Scan and attempt recovery of bad sectors” should also be checked. However, this may involve a period of many hours.

3

Hello Heid,

Yes I have run the check disk utility in windows 7 (same as your error check in XP). Cannot access disk comes up on screen.

I have had this hard drive for about 2 or 3 months.

Thanks Tom