Bloated battery

Yes. Was not thrilled with that but seeing my drive was near the end of the warranty period I think it is ok. I was very surprised that they are sending me the replacement first. I can use the same materials to send mine back so it won’t be too expensive.

Paying for an RMA return is pretty much an industry standard. My son just had to return his ASUS laptop for an RMA and it cost him 26 Dollars.

Seems to be a standard issue with the 2 T WD Wireless My Passport’s - interesting a recall was never done if I look at this treat starting in 2015 and now in 2017 the same thing still happening. My 2T My Passport Wireless battery also decided to “blow up” yesterday - now to see if I can expect any support from WD in South Africa? I would not recommend anybody buying these drives after this experience and after reading about all the problems with these drives

Bad design. The battery should be a user replaceable item.

Got to admin that since the latest firmware even when the battery had discharged because of storage and then left on changed for a while, the battery in mine is still fine. I’m avoiding keeping it continually on external power.

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I have been using the current firmware (1.07.02) since a few weeks after it came out, 9 months ago. Today my 2TB My Passport Wireless battery puffed up and popped off the plastic cover.

So no, the new firmware makes no difference. The batteries still fail spectacularly.

Am curious if you left it plugged into power all during this time?

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For 9 months? Absolutely not. It is plugged into my laptop with the USB 3.0 cable when I use it with my laptop. I always turn my laptop off at night. I always take the WD My Passport Wireless 2TB with me when I leave the house. I’ve never plugged it in anywhere, though. I just keep it with me for security reasons.

Anyway, I’d like to get a replacement battery, any leads?

If your laptop has an always on when plugged in USB slot, then you may be overcharging it each overnight.

My MPW is only on my laptop when managing data on the drive. Otherwise, mine is turned off much of the time, I check it every so often to top off charge if necessary using the charger and cable included, and I take the MPW with me on trips, vacations so I can access the media stored on it.

Anyway, contact WD customer support about a replacement.

mike27oct: I’m sorry that I wasn’t clearer in my other response to you. I meant to say that my MPW is rarely plugged into anything. If it is still plugged into my lap[top at night, my laptop is not on and the laptop is not providing any power to the USB ports.

Also, mike127oct, are you part of WD support or are you just a WD MPW user? You post on this thread quite a bit, so I’m curious.

Additionally, the SD card slot doesn’t work after the battery bloated. Guess it broke more than just the battery. I don’t know if the card slot connectors are broken or there is something else on the PC board that is broken.

This ■■■■■. :’(

I am just a user of this forum who happens to have a few WD devices, like MPW and WD My cloud NAS, a DL2100

I would contact WD customer support about your issue if I were you.

Please contact WD Support team directly for bloated battery issue. Thanks.

Hello from Germany,
same happened to my My Passport Wireless 2TB two weeks ago. Battery bloated and cracked the case.
Contacted WD Germany and they want me to send in the defective device for change.
Primarily I want to save my data but could not get satisfying answers in the RMA-support case dialogue.
As I understood, WD will NOT save my data. So once sent to them my data is lost.
I asked if it is possible to remove the battery and copy the data from the defective to another external hard disk, but did not get an answer about technical facts.
I can clearly recognize the plug but cannot understand if it is possible to simply unplug. Seems to me like attached in an unreversible manner.
Furthermore I do not know if it is allowed for me to unplug, to not loose the garanty/change procedure.
At this point I do not know how to proceed. Computer recognizes the HD and all data. I want to save my data but do not want to risk the replacement.
Can I copy more than 1 TB of data from the defective HD to a new one without detaching the bloated battery or is this to risky in terms of security?
Help appreciated… :wink:

If it were my issue, I would get a 2TB drive and if you don;t have one handy, you will need to buy one. ((should have had one for backing up the MPW anyway.)

Of course, this presumes that you can connect the MPW to your computer and read/write the data on it. So if you can, then COPY all the data on the MPW to the other 2TB drive also connected to your computer. Monitor the process to be sure the battery will not act up. The computer will not charge the battery when on the computer.

Once all done, delete all the data on the MPW, pack it up and send it in for an exchange.

Want to inform the community about what happened:
Contacted WD in the help desk.
As the guaranty of the MPW was already over and I could not find the bill, WD did a prolongation, after having sent some photos of the defective item.
After that I could start an RMA-process.
I found quite confusing that WD-helpdesk and RMA-process were two completely different consumer communcation procedures. After every answer of WD in the helpdesk an automatical sent email of the system reminded that the case would be closed if I would not answer in between 24 hours. This is sort of panicking clients…
The RMA-process on the other side went along without any communication. Online I could see a status (which never changed), but not add any information to it (sent, returned item, tracking number, comments).
Two weeks later I got an parcel from an completely unknown sender, which let me very sceptic, packed in a very handmade kind. Inside was a new MPW, sent from an agency in Poland without any reference to WD. No papers, no letter, nothing. Quite strange.
What remains: happy for the restitution of the defective HD. Uncertainness regarding the reliability of the WD-products in general and scepticism regarding handling and communication manufacturer-client.

Has anyone found a replacement?

Hi. Has someone solved how to use a My Passport Wireless without a battery and only connected to a computer through the USB Cable?

I thought they would still work fine via USB without the battery attached ? (haven’t tested mine because the battery is still fine)

Anyways … the old version My Passport Wireless and My Passport Wireless Pro are both standard SATA drives … they are just plugged into a USB Connector board.

So, it’s easy enough to shuck (remove the internal drive … videos below) and use it with a 3rd Party 2.5" USB enclosure (around $10) without any problems.

If my battery dies, and the drive doesn’t work via USB … then i’ll be shucking mine.

Thank you Joey for your answer and videos
I was able to disassemble the device without issues but, about working without a battery attached, unfortunately the device is not working only connected to the USB cable to the computer or to the electrical adapter and without the battery.
In order to test something else, I attached an equivalent battery, I mean a 3.7V - 4800mAh Li-Ion battery, and the only thing I got was to have a red led light instead of nothing at all.
The original battery has 5 cables: 2 red cables (+3.7V), 2 black cables (Ground connections) and, also 1 yellow cable.
The battery, mentioned above, the one that I attached, only has a red and a black connections. Do you know what is the yellow cable about? Perhaps this information could help?
Thanks again. Jorge

Hi Wd Team, my battery blotted yesterday like others , can you please help get this working.

Hi all,
I have had the same problem with mine. Did anyone on here have any luck with a fix on the issue? Did any of you find a replacement battery?