Walked into my study this morning to be met by an incredible sight, my Passport Wireless in pieces, Ghosts? I wonder, upon further inspection I found the following - the lid completely pushed out, battery broke it’s holding clip and swollen - needless to say drive no longer working, more than a years worth of images lost. So what to do? I doubt that I will get support from WD as I don’t reside in the USA - so guys think twice before you buy this drive, upon further research I found that this seems to be a common problem with these drives
Wow! Sorry to hear that.
I am wondering if you had one of the later firmware releases installed that are supposed to prevent this from happening. Do you remember if you had the latest firmware installed when this occurred?
The firmware update before the latest one, I have tried to install the latest update but the drive would fail updating - same error every time - Time out - so I gave up on it
My experience with WD not the greatest had a couple of WD Element drives just packing up and O my God I have a WD My Cloud that is so slow that I gave up on it - all the products have a great promise but all of them fail to deliver - so now to find a new Brand I guess
If you did not heed the warning banner on lots of pages at this site regarding the battery, very little sympathy for you. On the other hand, if you did, then lots of sympathy for you.
Contact WD Support about this issue for an exchange and possible recovery of your data.
if mduckitt had “the firmware update before the latest one” like he said, then he did have one of the firmware versions that was supposed to mitigate this problem. …does not give me a good feeling about leaving my passport wireless in a desk drawer when I am not using it. I think I will store it someplace where nothing will catch on fire if the battery decides to go south.
True, but maybe he left it plugged into power all the time. Not a good idea. We really don’t know FOR SURE if he had a current (battery-fixin’) FW installed. Not a good omen if he did. Also, the FW before current one was pulled from website if you recall.
No matter what the situation, WD should make good ANY MPW that exhibits this catastrophe. (AND, restore any data from bad one they can recover!)
The drive was not plugged in all the time, to be honest it spent a lot of time in a drawer and only came out when I needed to transfer backup images to it. The day before it “exploded” I did transfer about 8 SD card worth of images - but still that should not be a reason for it to self-destruct - and going back to all the issues on this drive it seems irresponsible of WD to continue selling it - the situation can be extremely dangerous - they sell it as a hard drive for photographers to transfer images on the go - photographers fly a lot - imagine this happen during a flight
mduckitt, you are right! You used the drive the way it was intended to be used, yet it exploded! I agree that can be very dangerous. There is a lot of energy stored in those batteries!
Have you contacted WD about this? How did they respond?
Agree, so call support at these numbers or select another country if not in US:
Thank You, will let you know Tomorrow if I got any “joy” from these guys
Well, blow me over!!! Phoned WD Support and they immediately confirmed that the Wireless Drive was still under warranty - and can I please return it to the retailer where I bought if from (Thank heavens I bought it from an online store so had the invoices etc) - the also send me the list of approved retailers and distributers etc in South Africa - Contacted the store and voila - they came and fetched the drive to replace it - I am impressed with the 3 year Warranty and how seamless the return worked
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Hi @mduckitt
We were following your issue behind the scenes over here to make sure things went well. You may receive an email from us. Just let them know how it goes with the RMA replacement.
Also, there are two things to keep in mind: 1) Most important, make sure you have the latest firmware on your drive. That will prevent any over-charging of your battery. 2) Make sure you don’t leave it plugged in charging weeks on end. The drive was not designed to be used in place of a home NAS drive.
I’m glad you’re getting a fast turn around on your RMA.
