My Passport uses a proprietary USB cable!? Where to buy replacements?

sfchris · October 15, 2015, 1:19am

Hello,

I bought 50 My passport 320 GB drives on behalf of my company and was shocked to see that they use a proprietary USB cable!!! Of course one or two of these cables appear to have gone bad!

Where can I buy replacement cables and do I have to pay through the nose since they are proprietary?

raposa · October 15, 2015, 2:37am

They aren’t proprietary cables, they are micro-USB. This technology has been around for about 2 years now and I can even use the cable for my blackberry on my passport. You can buy them online on the WD Store or just call tech support and see if they can replace them!

This topic is about the same thing: http://community.wdc.com/t5/My-Passport-for-PC/faulty-usb-cable/td-p/3695

sfchris · October 15, 2015, 2:37am

Thank you for setting me straight. I didn’t recognize it as micro as I have only seen micro-usb on tiny devices. Not hard drives. Weird design choice especially since mini-usb is more sturdy while not being very big. So many things about this hard drive are causing me headaches, and I bought 50 of them for work

mfrater · October 15, 2015, 2:37am

I agree that the micro usb connectors seem pretty flimsy. The plug does not seem to fit snugly into the socket on the drive.

You only need to move the drive slightly, the cable will wobble in the socket, and the connection to the drive will be lost. I dare not move the drive at all during a read or write operation. I just took my new 750GB Passport of its packet this week, and was disappointed to find how unreliable this connection was.