I bought 2 x WD 4TB My Passport drives (WDBYFT0040BBK-0A) about 3 years ago. They were working fine for a long time but lately they’ve been acting up.
They’d keep disconnecting and reconnecting when plugged in. Now they won’t show up at all. Sometimes if I keep disconnecting and re-connecting them they’ll work, but then they might stop again soon after.
Then I switched the cable to the USB 2.0 port and they work fine (although slower, obviously). Swapped back to the USB 3.0 and still not working.
I’ve tried many cables and 3 different PCs, same story - only work on USB 2.0 ports.
I have two WD Elements portable hard drives also. Both work fine in USB 3.0 ports. This proves the problem isn’t the cables or the ports.
I tried uninstalling the drives in Device Manager, restarting the PC and reconnecting. Didn’t work.
I’ve seen this problem reported on several forums, but never found a solution.