WD My Passport Essentials SE problems

Hi. I’ve had this 1 TB HDD for about 5 years and now it’s giving some problems. I use it for Time Machine backups on my Mac, so it automatically turns on every hour and make a backup.

First of all, I think there are some spin up problems: usually it makes a short sound and then immediately start spinning, but sometimes it makes a longer, buzzing noise followed by the “normal” sound and it fails to start. After about a second, it tries again and starts correctly.

Today I was normally using my Mac when it gave me a critical warning saying that the disk could not be repaired, and that I had to back it up immediately and format it. Now I can’t mount the HDD anymore and I can’t repair it using Disk Utility, as the “Repair Disk” button is greyed out.

However I did some tests using diagnostic tools and the S.M.A.R.T. status seems to be OK. 

Is my HDD failing? Should I buy a new one?

Hi Jaggions, welcome to the Community. Try connecting the Passport to another PC and verify if the same problems happen. If the hard drive continues to have issues it would appear to be faulty and needs to be replaced.