I purchased the external HD about a month ago, and loaded with my excess files from my 2TB. It worked fine up until two days ago. I let a friend borrow the drive to watch a movie, and when he returned it, it won’t work on my or his laptop anymore. My other hard drive works just fine in the same USB ports, I have tried all ports, I have tried flashing my BIOS, I have tried using programs like HD sentinel, I have tried to update the firmware and drivers (firmware update won’t even start,) I have tried unistalling drivers, rebooting, and let them reinstall as soon I plug it in. I have tried your Data Lifeguard tool, and it doesn’t even show there is one single sector to scan. The light blinks on the drive, but the drive does not spin, or at least feel or sound like it does. It shows up in safe removal and disk management. The disk is not initialized, and when I try to initialize it or turn it online, the error message "the request could not be performed because on an I/O device error. This goes for both MBR and GPT. Same error on all the laptops I have tried to plug into the past 2 days to fix it. I am currently in Afghanistan, so my options are pretty limited, but I do have internet access. I would LOVE to get my movies back since, you know, I’m in Afghanistan, but I guess I would settle for an operational HD. Some help would really be appreciated.
I/O device error it’s normally related to imput output error, it might be that the cable or the port on the drive it self might be damage. Probably the drive was removed from the computer whitout ejecting it properly.
Were you able to test the drive with a different cable?
I have the same problem, was working yesterday is not today,
WD My Passport external drive 07A8
OS is Windows 8, 64bit
I have a WD my passport external drive, on connecting to USB port, it is recognized under “remove media” and it can be seen on Disc Management pane, but it is listed as Disc 1, Type Unknown and Status Not initialized. The drivers are all installed and it physically connects and seems to function normally.
But I can’t see the drive on explorer or access the data thru Disc Management. If you try to initialize it or change it to online you get I/O device error.
I need to recover the data and repair the drive if possible, is there a solution? It seems a recurring theme
I am having exactly the same problem. Used it one day, disconnected it and couldn’t start it up again. I see the drive blinking but it does not come up in my computer and in computer management I see it as not initialized. If i try to initialize it I get the I/O error.
Is there any way I can save the data from the drive? As I browsed some forums I noticed alot of people reporting the same mistake so it is pretty common with My Passport Ultra I guess
I have a 2 tb WD drive that is more than half full of my Photography photos. I go to log into my iMac today and get a message that one of my drives failed to mount and gave me 3 choices - initialize (I can’t afforde to lose the data so this was not an option), eject (which I chose thinking I could remount it _NOT!), and ignore.
I’ve tried everything I can think of to get my computer to recognise the drive - no luck. I have a huge library of photo’s on this drive and I’m pissed off.
Has anyone come up with a solution to this problem?
P.S. WD > Mac just had a major update which I udated yesterday - could that have anything to do with it?
I’m also facing the same issue with My Passport Ultra, did you get the problem solved, if yes, how?
If the drive was not safely removed from the pc, it is probable that the drive became corrupted, especially if you were copying files to it right before. If the drive shows up in Disk Management, but not in Computer, then that is likely what happened. You will need to get partition recovery software to restore the file structure. Any corrupted files will be unrecoverable.
I am facing the same problem with the same I/O error. Were you able to solve it? Please help me!
I don’t want to loose my important data in the drive.
Thanks.
There is no solving it. An I/O error usually indicates that you have a bad usb cable. Change the cable (not longer than 18 inches) and try again. If you still can’t see the drive in Computer, but it does show up in Disk Management, then you may be contending with corruption as well.
I have the same problem, was working yesterday is not today,
WD My Passport external drive 07A8
OS is Windows 8, 64bit
I have a WD my passport external drive, on connecting to USB port, it is recognized under “remove media” and it can be seen on Disc Management pane, but it is listed as Disc 1, Type Unknown and Status Not initialized. The drivers are all installed and it physically connects and seems to function normally.
But I can’t see the drive on explorer or access the data thru Disc Management. If you try to initialize it or change it to online you get I/O device error.
I need to recover the data and repair the drive if possible, is there a solution? It seems a recurring theme
I am having the exact same issue. Was anybody able to find a fix for this without losing your files? If so, how did that go?
I have been storing photos on the drive for 6 months, then one day it would no longer pop-up. The drive shows up as Disk 1 in Data Managment says not initialized and says Unknown. I am using Windows 7. I need to recover the files,
I’m having the exact same issue. Its not a corupt file system from unplugging the drive while being used either. Brand new out of the box I had this issue with my desktop running Windows 7 Ultimate. On my laptop Windows 8.1 it works with no issues. It must be some kind of driver conflict.
I sent my passport to data recovery and during their diagnostics they discovered that the Head Rack Assembly is the failure mechanism.
The Head Rack Assembly (HRA) is the device inside the drive cavity that supports the read/write heads; there is one head per surface. Attached to the back end of the assembly is a voice coil positioned between two rare earth magnets. Energizing the voice coil will drive the read/write heads to the location on the media for reading or writing.
Sample Photos
When the R/W heads or other components of the assembly fail completely, the drive may make a clicking sound. The only choice there would be to replace and realign the failed HRA with one that matches it from a “donor” drive.
I do not have the results of this “transplant” yet, but they are optimistic that most of the data will be recovered and put on a new drive.
I am using ACE Data recovery out of Dallas, TX. The diagnostics were free, and they are now in the process of trying to recover the data, so I do not know if there is success yet, though they seem really knowledgable and confident that 90+% of my data will be recovered. I found them through the Western Digital website (10% discount if you go that route). You can also call to talk with them, and they will explain their process.
