When I connect my WD My Passport 1TB external hard drive, it does not show in My Computer. The PC detects that it is connected, but it stops with just that. I first encountered this problem this afternoon when I connected the hard drive on a friend’s laptop. The said description happened. I tried it again on another friend’s laptop but got the same result. And now, I’ve tried it on my own PC and the same happened.
I’ve read up about issues similar to mine via Google search and most suggested I check the drive through disk management. When I open Disk Management, a pop up message shows and tells me that I must initialize a disk before the Local Disk Manager can access it. And when I click OK, another message appears and says “The request cannot be performed because of an I/O device error.”
What do I do? I am now contemplating on whether I should try to update the firmware to see if it would fix this issue.
OBSERVATIONS ON THE exHDD:
LED ligh blinks when plugged to PC/Laptop
a clicking sound can be heard when plugged to PC, I can feel and hear the disk spinning, but only for it to stop some time later (the light is still blinking, though). I don’t recall dropping the drive, or applying blunt force on it by any chance. It’s been lying on my desktop ever since so the sound’s cause, as if something was dislodged inside, is a total mystery to me.
Yes, I have tried using another cable. I have both used the cable included in the package and another USB 3.0 cable that I bought from a computer store. Using either yield the same results described in my post above. When the device is plugged to a PC/laptop (I running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit), the computer plays a sound which means it recognizes it, but it stops there. It neither shows in My Computer nor does the autorun window show (where I select what to do with the device) like it used to. I can feel and hear the disc inside spinning, along with the clicking sound I said, but after a while, it stops. The device is still detected by the PC, however, but I cannot access its contents.
I’ve also tried running WD Drive Utilities. Below is what can be seen when I run it. The SMART status check yielded that result, while the other two remaining tests fail to run, despite having been clicked a lot of times.
