My WD My Passport isn't recognised by my laptop.

[giddyup]

Cheers Pib, no time now but I'll give it a try tomorrow and report back.

Nope, did as you suggested, it asked me to partition the disk (my passport) but then I got the message, "unable to partition because of disk error", so I guess the ext. hard drive is faulty.

The actual message I got asked me to initialise the disk for the Logical Disk Manager and once I did that I got another message that wasn't possible because the disk was faulty, or words to that effect.

[RichCor]

If you were trying to preserve the existing data on the WD Passport then "Initialize", "Format" or "Partition" would be the last thing you'd ever want to do.

As stated previously, many of these 'devices' are actually SATA drives in custom box.

If your priority wat trying to preserve the data then I would open it up and see if it was indeed a SATA drive in an enclosure. If you want to preserve the guaranty/warranty then accept the data is gone and arrange to have the unit replaced through Western Digital, Thailand.

[Pib]

Cheers Pib, no time now but I'll give it a try tomorrow and report back.

Nope, did as you suggested, it asked me to partition the disk (my passport) but then I got the message, "unable to partition because of disk error", so I guess the ext. hard drive is faulty.

The actual message I got asked me to initialise the disk for the Logical Disk Manager and once I did that I got another message that wasn't possible because the disk was faulty, or words to that effect.

Just have the drive attached to the computer, open up Windows Disk Management, and give us a snip/snapshot of the Disk Management display.

[NanLaew]

Can the suspect bad external HD be mounted and viewed on a Linux machine? A few years ago, I had a laptop HD that went bad inasmuch as Windows couldn't see it. A few months later, after I had consigned it to the 'too hard' bin, I was making a dual-boot laptop with Ubuntu. On a whim, I plugged the 'bad' HD in via a USB adapter and after mounting, saw all the files as accessible. I copied them via my LAN to another Windows machine, reformatted the 'bad' drive and used it in another machine.

[giddyup]

Here's the screenshots.

[Pib]

Thanks for the snapshots. The problem is not Drive Letter related. You computer is seeing the passport drive since it shows up as Disk 1 Unknown but it's not showing any partition/storage capability info. So, the passport is at least partially working...and possibly fully working unless their is a hardware problem such as with the drive itself, the USB cable, driver, or software interference. Of course a "partially" working drive is about the same as totally not working drive at the end of the day.

I goggled "the request could not be performed because of an I/O device error passport drive" and got a quite a few posts which first recommended trying a "Safe Mode boot" which basically stops other software from booting up other than the Windows software itself....helps to eliminate some software you have loaded from causing the problem. Recommend you try a Safe Mode boot and see if the drive is then fully seen. Be sure to check the Windows Devices menu again to see if the warning/triangle you noticed before is still there.

Oh, by the way, did you try uninstalling that device driver showing up as such as recommended earlier...Windows will automatically attempt to reload the correct driver when replugging back in the device or on the next computer boot. Offending drivers/software can cause hardware not to work...make the problem look hardware-based when in fact it's software/driver based.

You said earlier the shop guy plugged the passport into another computer and the passport drive still didn't work...hopefully you actually saw him run this test....anyway, that would tend to rule out driver/software causing your problem unless the passport drive cable was bad. But the cable should be good since it's allowing your computer to see the drive as shown in the Disk Management. A standard USB cable just consists of a plus and negative 5V power wires and the plus and negative Data flow wires...total of 4 wires. The power wires are working since it powering up the drive and the data lines must be working since it allowing you to see the drive in Disk Mgt. So, this leads us back to a hardware problem on the passport or a driver problem.

At this point I would recommend:

1. Booting in Safe Mode and see what happens with the drive. If you can now see it properly then you have a driver/software conflict on your newly installed Win 7 the shop did for you.

2. Try hooking it to one more computer...a work or friends computer...etc., to see if it's recognized.

Passport drives have been out for a long time and no special driver is needed to make them run...the proper driver is just part of Windows. Actually most passport drives have a second driver called a SES driver which just adds some special features rarely used but is not needed at all for the passport driver to work. Windows also includes that driver and it can also be download from the WD site.

[doctormann]

Can the suspect bad external HD be mounted and viewed on a Linux machine? A few years ago, I had a laptop HD that went bad inasmuch as Windows couldn't see it. A few months later, after I had consigned it to the 'too hard' bin, I was making a dual-boot laptop with Ubuntu. On a whim, I plugged the 'bad' HD in via a USB adapter and after mounting, saw all the files as accessible. I copied them via my LAN to another Windows machine, reformatted the 'bad' drive and used it in another machine.

I'd second this suggestion. You don't even need a 'Linux Machine' if you can get hold of a live DVD - any distribution should work. You can download Linux ISOs from the interweb and then burn to a DVD - or even put the ISO on a flash drive using Unetbootin. You can boot off the DVD or flash drive and then see if Linux can see the external drive. Linux can read Windows NTFS files and, if they are accessible, you can copy them directly to the HDD on your machine. Then, invoke GParted from the Linux DVD, format the external drive as NTFS and copy the files back at your leisure.

No guarantee that this will work but what do you have to lose?

Good luck.

DM

[howto]

Regarding the cable, it is not a standard micro usb.

It is propriatory.

OP, can you please post a photo of the usb port

of the WD Passport.

The reason I say this is the childrens teacher

whom comes on Saturdays has such.

Her previous model failed (it had micro usb)

WD replaced it, this units interface is different,

She want's me to place movies on this device,

and did not bring the cable.

None of my cables worked.

The next weekend she arrived with that cable,

it worked and I copied 10+ GB to that device.

BTW, I will not purchase a WD Passport.

Hope this helps.

[RichCor]

^^^ ooh, yes. Forgot about that. WD passport uses a special cable.

[Pib]

Regarding the cable, it is not a standard micro usb.

It is propriatory.

OP, can you please post a photo of the usb port

of the WD Passport.

The reason I say this is the childrens teacher

whom comes on Saturdays has such.

Her previous model failed (it had micro usb)

WD replaced it, this units interface is different,

She want's me to place movies on this device,

and did not bring the cable.

None of my cables worked.

The next weekend she arrived with that cable,

it worked and I copied 10+ GB to that device.

BTW, I will not purchase a WD Passport.

Hope this helps.

It's not proprietary. There are quite a few variations of the USB port....original full size, mini, micro, etc.

The Passport now uses a "USB Micro-B" connector which is one of many USB variations but still a standard and used by many other manufacturers/devices. The the first Figure at this webpage.

It's different than the "USB Mini-B" port on some solder Passport drives (which maybe your friend originally had) which is just a little larger (not much) than "USB Micro" ports and these Mini ports can easily be confused with a Micro port unless looking close and of course trying to plug in a wrong cable.

There are some charts at the bottom of this Wikipedia page shows all the variations of USB ports/cables.

Yeap, quite a few variations of the USB port...variations which are not proprietary.

[RichCor]

Just to note, the cable that comes supplied with the WD external USB drives is usually VERY SHORT. Over the years many people have found that longer versions of the same cable do not work. This is probably why many have mistakenly stated it was a 'special' or proprietary cable. Seems longer cables don't deliver adequate current for the drive to function properly.

Hopefully the OP has tried using the original cable.

[giddyup]

Just to note, the cable that comes supplied with the WD external USB drives is usually VERY SHORT. Over the years many people have found that longer versions of the same cable do not work. This is probably why many have mistakenly stated it was a 'special' or proprietary cable. Seems longer cables don't deliver adequate current for the drive to function properly.

Hopefully the OP has tried using the original cable.

Yes, only have the one cable that came with the HD. A cable that has a normal USB connector both ends wouldn't fit as the USB port on the hard drive is specific to it.

[NanLaew]

Post #40 first illustration shows a USB3 connector. These are not fully compatible with USB2 connections, either physically or electronically and if the storage device is plugged into a USB1 or USB2 port, Windows will flag it and suggest that a USB3 connection be used. However, it will transfer data at lower USB1 and USB2 rates. Shorter cables are also the norm for USB3 connections. It has to do with data transfer rates (the shorter he better).

[Pib]

I've plugged my WD Passport Ultra USB 3.0 (which has the USB Micro-B connector) into my laptop's USB 2.0 port several times...works fine....but I do get a notice that it can be faster if plugged into a USB 3 port....fair enough...makes sense...plugging a USB 3 device/drive into a USB 2 port means you will be throttling the USB 3 device's speed....but it still works fine....just slower due to the slower USB 2 interface. Plugging the Passport Ultra into one of my laptop's USB 3 ports I don't get the notice....and of course get the USB 3 speed.

USB 3 is billed to be backwards compatible electronically with USB 2...not to imply "every" USB 2 device will work on USB 3...I guess that's why they still include one (maybe two to reduce costs) USB 2 ports on laptops vs just making them all USB 3 ports. My laptop has two USB 3 ports and one USB 2 port. I have a couple of USB 2 drive enclosures and thumb-drives....they work fine on the USB 3 ports...it just using them on a USB 3 port is overkill since the devices can only pump out USB 2 speeds although the laptop's USB 3 ports could accept much faster pumping from the device

The key is ensuring your have the correct USB cable to interface between the device's USB port and your computer's USB port, with the computer's USB port probably being the original full size USB port.

Edited October 16, 2015 by Pib

[chubby]

I have bought a few of these external USB drives, and returned a few them not working out of the box.

fwiw, see if you can't find a few other desktops with different OS's to plug it into win7 , win8 , that have known clean, preferably recent OS installations, and wouldn't go messing with partitions if you want your data, till you've done that. , though i have not read through this whole thread.

[chubby]

what is the serial number/ model number of the drive ?

[Pib]

what is the serial number/ model number of the drive ?

For my Passport Ultra the part number, serial number, bar codes, and Made in Thailand are clearly on the bottom.

[NeverSure]

The screenshot in post 35 shows that disk 1 is unallocated. It also doesn't show that it has a volume. Obviously the bios and the disk management tool see it as hardware but I think we're going to find out that the software that creates a volume and a drive (letter) is gone.

I would be looking for a good data recovery tool if it was real important to me. I've never tried a recovery from an unallocated space so I don't know what would happen.

Cheers.

[johng]

On 12/10/2015 at 6:47 PM, johng said:

Well it seems Pib is correct the Western Digital My Passport has the USB interface built into the HD controller board....yuck I'll have to remember not to buy one of those ! !

 

And as a further note one  the 3    2 TB Western Digital MyBook drives I own  failed the other day....

so I took it apart and was relived to see the hard drive  had a normal SATA connection so hooked it up to my PC directly  only to find that the partition was unallocated and no way to initialise it.

After a day of googling and lots of head scratching  it turns out that  the USB to SATA interface board inside the enclosure is doing transparent encryption of all user data on the storage medium, at all times !!

  ...so if the  USB --> SATA board goes wrong you cant just  plug HDD into any SATA port and retrieve your data

although I do believe some clever buggers can retrieve  the encryption keys and unlock the data

http://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1002.pdf

 

I wish they had made it plainly clear on the box that the drive was always encrypted..yes transparently without  the user entering a password or ever using the supplied encrypting software !!!!!!!!    

 

Luckily for me I had most of the data backed up   so just deleted the partition and started again with the hard drive in another ( non encrypting  )  USB enclosure   

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1828742/book-3tb-external-internal.html

Quote

Please be aware that whether you set a password or not, it always encrypts the data.
This means that if the USB to SATA interface becomes defective in any way, you can't just rip the drive out of the case and put it in a docker or into your computer and hook it up directly and be able to read your data.

So far Western Digital's stand point on this is that they don't care. If it's under warranty, they won't replace the board, they will only replace the whole unit - guaranteeing that you don't get your data back.
They won't sell you the board so that you can get your data back.
They have no software decrypter that will allow you to get your data back.
If you send your drive to any data recovery house other than the ones that pay them to be authorized, you void your warranty.
If you send your drive to an authorized data recovery house, be prepared to pay $600-$1400

 

Edited September 12, 2016 by johng

[johng]

further note updated

The drive was really slow and flaky,would not mount in windows took a long time to mount on Debian

 S.M.A.R.T   said it was ok  but   Crystaldiskinfo reported  that  it had 156 uncorrectable sectors...tried to write zeros to the whole disk to reset sector count  but PC spontaneously rebooted after about an hour

it is a deceased drive..not resting, pining for the fjords or simply stunned..its dead  R.I.P