My passport stopped working / is not recognized

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
1

Hi, Ive had my passport essential usb 3.0 since september of 2010 and it was working fine until one time when I plugged it in on my macbook it didn’t get recognized on the desktop or disk  utility. I tried talking to phone support, updated firmware and tried a power booster cable and NONE of it worked! Sometimes the drive will get recognized as a drive when using disk utility but this happens rarely. Also when it is recognized it shows as if it is unmounted and no data is on it. However in the past I formatted it as an HFS+ Journaled drive and it workied fine. 

This is what happens when I plug it in:

  1. The drive starts spinning but maintains a solid white light. Occasionally, the light will link 3 times a second like it is supposed to but then goes back to solid white in less than a second. 

  2. After a while (3-5 hours) the drive will still not be recognized but the light will blink once a second as if it is idle!

PLEASE HELP ME FIND A WAY TO GET THE DATA OFF IT AS DATA RECOVERY IS TOO EXPENSIVE!!!

After retrieving the data I will simply return it.

IF YOU KNOW ANYTHING ONTHIS MATTER PLEASE RESPOND

2

Hi there, the less expensive recovery methods would be software-based, but since the drive is acting like that then I don’t think they will help you much.

If you didn’t have a password you could open the drive (Can kill the warranty if any) as it can be that the case itself is the one at fault while the drive still works fine.

But if the problem is the drive itself… Then you’ll need to try a tech.