I’ve had some frustrating problems with my external drive (P/N: WDBAMB7500ABK-00). Last night it worked perfectly, but today it isn’t even showing up in disk management. It’s taken a fall or two to the soft carpet floor from a height of about 16 inches, but I don’t think this should be a problem. When I plug the drive in, the light comes on, and it beeps. It beeps five times, making a lower tone for about one second and a higher for about half a second, with a pause of about 1 second between each pair of beeps. Is this an error code?
I’ve tried plugging it into another computer, but it doesn’t show up there either (it should be noted that said computer has very finicky USB ports). I’m using the cable that was included with the drive.
Should I be able to recover data from my drive? I have my music stored on it along with some photos and videos, and I’d really like to get these off.
It’s taken a fall or two to the soft carpet floor from a height of about 16 inches, but I don’t think this should be a problem.
I’m sorry, but those 16 inches are more than enough to damage a drive beyond repair. And more than once, it’s a miracle it lasted this long. Remember, a drive has a platter(s) spinning at more than 5,000 rpms. If that head hits the platter, it can take chunks out of it destroying your data permanently. An internal hard drive that’s been dropped a mere half an inch can be seriously damaged.
Once a drive is running, you shouldn’t even move it because of the wear stress that it produces on the spindle motor. Spinning drives in both laptops and pcs that are moved around a lot can expect to have much higher and quicker failure rates.
I figured that was the problem. I wasn’t careful enough with that drive, for sure, and what you said I knew but didn’t heed.
Oh well. It’s an important lesson learned, if nothing less. I’ll just have to wait til solid state becomes cheap enough, then I’ll get a more durable drive.
If you find a solution please let me know. I thought my problem was from removing the harddrive to quickly from the USB port but I now think this problem is because it slipped of the CPU tower and fell about 12 to 16 inches to a carpeted floor while still attached to the computer. Hope we find a solution to recover our data…
I’m definitely having the same problem with my Passport…I don’t think mine has had any types of bangs or anything like that. I keep it in a padded old makeup bag. I too am desperate to get my data off this thing. Did anyone find a solution on how to get that done?
OK, I’m a passport owner (several times over) PC, Mac and Linux OSs. Not an authorized tech but experienced enough. I’ve recovered three times now using Data Rescue from Prosoft Engineering. You need another drive to recover to but it’s way WAY less expensive than a dedicated recovery service. That usually runs $350-1200
My passport just started to do this as well and I have only used it like 4 times. I agree that is absolutely ridiculous that this portable harddrive can’t sustain a fall to a carpet. Why would I purchase a portable one then? Does wd think that I am going to transport this around in a huge padded case? Seriously! Besides, this isn’t the first time this has happened to an external harddrive I’ve had from WD. My other one was non-portable and sat on my desk and just stopped working one day. If you look all over the internet, it appears to be a very common problem. Time to switch to Seagate.
I am not able to access my picture and data files that have been stores on my external hard drive either. Unfortunately, this is where I backed up all of my pictures and data. For many things on this hard drive I have no other copies.
I recently took my external hard drive to Best Buy - Geek Squad to see if the files could be recovered without going thru a great expense. The technician removed the drive from it’s case to see if he could assess the file directly but it only said raw drive. The technician has told us that my external hard drive has lost its partition table so now no computer can read from it. It needs software to rebuild table to then read the hard drive. Do you think this program would be able to rescue my data ??
Other things I have tried:
connecting to different computers
connected external hard drive to computer using a new USB cable
I’m having the same problem. Mine has never been dropped. I was in the middle of using it and it just suddenly stopped and now I can’t find it on the computer. It seems to me that a lot of people are having the same problem…wonder what’s going on.
There is no driver for Windows 2000 pro for the drive. If you read the manual, Windows 2000 is not listed as a supported operating system. As a matter of fact, Windows isn’t even listed at all.
I just bought the Passport Essential 500 GB and wanted to copy files over. While registering, I was prompted to update the Firmware. After downloading the Updater and executing the Update, the computer went to a ‘Restart’ mode and the next thing is that the computer cannot detect the Passport Essential.
This is extremely disappointing. Fortunately for me, it is my first day but definitely NOT good value what I paid for. A turkey indeed…Worse, the support hotline does not work on weekends.
All I get it the option to back up or exit. I have backed up already and can see that the pc part shows the name of my pc and that over 2,000 files are in there. The problem is that it does not give me the option to retrieve!
So, how to I get my files back? I do have another driver so could you go into more detail as to how I recover them with the other driver – i.e., step by step procedure?
This is indeed one of the most worthless devices i have ever bought in my whole life.
The story that it is because it might have dropped is complete bull**bleep**.
I have another drive for 2 years now that has always travelled with me and never ever had any problems, this WD piece of garbage i heve for 10 days now and has not been dropped whatsoever, yesterday it was ok and since today not a single computer is recognising it !!!
On the website there are only software updates and no complete software, but if the piece of garbage is not recognised at all how the hell can just an update help me then ???
I have copied around 200 GB on it and then cleaned the original pc where the data came from now leaving me with all the data gone.
This is a very expensive lesson, never ever buy anything of this brand in my whole life again !!!
