Hello !
The WD external hard drive (My Passport-WDC WD 10TMVW-*) has been working with out any issues for the past 8 years approximately. But, it stopped showing on the system very recently. Troubleshooted it for the past few days and most of the relevant solutions provided online have been implemented and none of them resolved the issue. Additional details are provided below and please respond with questions (or) other possible solutions to try out.
Operating System : Windows 10
General Notes : This device is only used whenever needed on an average of once a month.
The unit was password protected and displayed at ‘Devices and drives’ on ‘This PC’ after connected and unlocked. The password has been removed using EdgeRover desktop application after the unit stopped displaying on the system recently.
Recent History : The behavior of displaying at Devices and drives has changed around a month ago and didn’t show up as usual.
Researched for a solution online and just opening the Disk Management window used to show up the drive at Devices and drives.
IT was planned to investigate the issue further in the coming days but in the meanwhile it stopped working this week.
Couldn’t exactly recall if it was safely removed using Eject the unit feature.
Normally, it is removed after the prompt is displayed on the screen.
As part of troubleshooting, installed WD Dashboard and Utilities applications, both applications identified the unit, scanned successfully and no issues have been reported.
It has been connected to different USB ports on different systems and none of the attempts resolved the issue.
- All drivers are up-to-date.
- Hearing the usual sound after the unit is plugged into the system via USB.
- The light came up on the unit and on until it is disconnected.
- No unusual sound coming out of the unit.
- The unit was not dropped (or) damaged.
- No Windows updates have been installed recently.
- Restarted laptops for several times and no progress.
- Connected with a different cable from one of the other similar units.
- CAN NOT FORMAT THE DRIVE AS DATA HASN’T BEEN BACKED UP YET.
- After the unit is connected via USB, it was displayed as Disk1 as showing in the snippet below and no additional partitions displayed at Volumes. The Volumes list remain as is before the unit is connected.
