WD Passport SE not recongized

Hi guys! I have been reviewing alot of the problems with the WD Passport HD’s, but now I have one. First off, it’s a WD Passport SE 0740 1TB with the USB 3.0 to 2.0 cable. And my laptop is WIndows XP Professional SP 3.I have been using it for about 6 months now with no problems. The other day it was working fine in the morning. I shut my laptop down and went to lunch. When I came back and powered my machine back up, it didn’t recognize the HD. It does not show under my computer at all. When I try to look at it under disk management, the system freezes. I must add that the light is blinking all the time on the HD when it’s plugged in. When I first plug it in, the system detects a new device as “WD SES Device USB Device”, but then tells me that a problem occurred during installation and my hardware may not function properly. When I go to My Computer, it is not there. Whereas before, it was always labelled as “E” drive. If I disconnect it, it will display the “E” drive disk drive monentarily under My Computer and then disappear. If I go to “Device Manager”, it is displayed in 3 separate places. In Disk Drives it is shown as “WD My Passport 0740 USB Device” and under Properties it shows that this device is working properly and that it is Location 0. Under USB, it is shown as “WD Mass Storage Device” and under Properties it shows that this device is working properly and that it is Location 0. The third location is under “Other Devices” where it is titled “WD SES Device USB Device”. This tells me that “This device is not configured correctly. (Code 1)”.

I have plugged it into another computer with the same results. One other thing of note is that when it is plugged in, it seems to cause any related computer functions to freeze or stall unti it is unplugged. Almost like a power surge.I have made sure that the USB ports power settings are correct also. And there are no noises coming from the unit. It has not been dropped either, before that suggestion is made.

Please help as I really need to recover some of the files on this HD. I know that this is alot of info, but I wanted to include all details.

if you really need to get those files, I’d avoid using the drive period. More and more passports started to come in with pending head issues that ultimately can lead to platter damage and permanent data loss. We would normally convert them to sata, and image content with proper tools before it is too late

just got this one in yesterday, and no we can not recover them when they have damage like on picture :frowning: