Yup, this old chestnut. 
Like many people who own a WD Passport, I have run into the problem of, after several weeks of no problems, the passport has decided that this relationship isn’t working and stops talking to me. In this case, it vanishes from my computer after 1-5 minutes of being plugged in, and unplugging and replugging it results in the same. I’ve looked around, and this seems to be a common problem, so common that there’s a faq stapled to the top of this page (directly over where this post is, in fact). I have also found solutions ranging from a simple driver fix to an entire song and dance devoted to every solution to the problem.
These are all marvelous and helpful, except they do not work on my computer.
As you might have guessed, I am not technically minded, so my attempts at solutions have been slow. I have worked with the power to make sure that wasn’t the problem, I installed a new driver which seems to have done nothing, I called tech support and was on hold for an hour before they hung up on me, and I looked at the disc manager to see if the software was broken (for the brief time it registers when plugged in, it reads as healthy. Then it doesn’t read as there at all.) I would assume that it was broken if not for the fact that the light and vibrations still work.
To add insult to injury, while it was working I was so impressed with the small drive that I bought a second one, which is now plugged in and has not disconnected once. Since many problems I’ve seen online note that the passport stopped working almost immedietly, I am at a loss for why this particular one is in a huff.
Given that I made the staggeringly foolish decision to move my game steam library onto the non-responsive passport, I am eager to get it working again, if only to transfer the important files out. I (in my non-technical ignorance) imagine that the problem is software related, but why one works and the other does not has left me confused. Any help would be appreceated, and I apologise for the trouble of posting an already well documented problem.
tl;dr - my passport vanishes from my computer, but a second passpord works fine. Cables are not the problem, passpord works when plugged in for several minutes before being shut out. Please help.
