Can't open WD My Passport ext, HD

[giddyup]

I've been using a WD My Passport to store movies etc to play through a TV media player, and all has been working well until this morning. I plugged it into my laptop USB socket but it won't open up as it normally does so I can add or delete files. When I go to Device Manager it shows the My Passport icon and says that it's working correctly, but it's not visible in the Hard Disk Drives where I would normally be able to see it and open it up. All the files (movies) are still viewable and playable through the Media player, but just not on the laptop. Why?

[lopburi3]

Suspect that drive gets power from USB and is not powering up? My external HD on desktop sometimes fail to show and have to remove there power cord and replace to get it to spin up.

[giddyup]

Suspect that drive gets power from USB and is not powering up? My external HD on desktop sometimes fail to show and have to remove there power cord and replace to get it to spin up.

Removed the cord from the laptop and the Ext. HD several times, but doesn't make any difference. The Eject icon is showing and working for My Passport but I just can't get it to open up. I don't know whether it's worth trying a Systems Restore.

[lopburi3]

It not done I would try another USB port if you have one first.

[giddyup]

It not done I would try another USB port if you have one first.

Tried all three.

[lopburi3]

Also try a re-boot of computer with it attached - that often solves issues.

[giddyup]

Also try a re-boot of computer with it attached - that often solves issues.

No good, still the same. I have already had a My Passport replaced because the last one proved faulty, not going to bother again, will stick to flash drives, never get a problem with them. I don't need the 500gb of space on an external HD anyway.

[jvs]

I have had to replace three of those hard drive disks already,i was told they are very sensitive to being shorted out if you unplug them without ejecting them first.

Also a power surge can do it to them,same symptoms,it all seems to be there but no way to access the drive.

The pc shop tried a recovery program on mine but the last time i lost over ninety procent of the material.

The good news is it was under warranty the last time.Next buy will not be a Passport again,same as Giddyup.

[Pib]

...but it's not visible in the Hard Disk Drives where I would normally be able to see it and open it up. All the files (movies) are still viewable and playable through the Media player, but just not on the laptop. Why?

Not sure what you mean by the "Media Player?" Is that separate device from your computer or media player software on your computer? I expect you are talking a separate device.

Anyway, maybe a drive letter is not being automatically assigned to the drive by Windows. This problem can occur in all versions of Windows...it's not a common problem but it does occur for unknown reasons...some hidden configuration setting gets corrupted probably in the depths of Windows or on the drive. If no drive letter is automatically being assigned, you can fix this by using the Windows Disk Management. Several ways to get to the Disk Management menu but lets go the short way.

In the Run command window type Diskmgmt.msc. This will immediately take you to the Disk Management module like the below snapshot I took of my menu with my Passport drive connected (I picked the name of My Passport). Now, is the drive shown in the windows, and if it is shown does it also include a drive letter assignment (i.e., drive letter, D, E, etc. assigned)? If there is no drive letter assigned Windows Explorer will not see it so you can't see/view the drive. It will still show in your Device Manager but Windows File Explorer will not be able to see the drive unless it has a Drive Letter assigned.

If no drive letter is assigned you can assign one without negatively impacting any data...nothing is deleted, formatted, etc...just a drive letter is assigned which was suppose to occur automatically but didn't for some reason. Like where it shows "My Passport" in my example above with the Drive Letter E assigned, click on that area to highlight it, then right click to pull up a menu, select Change Drive Letter and Path, and then select Add to assign a drive letter. Pick a letter that comes after any other drives/partition you have in the computer to include any DVD. Like me I only only have one internal drive with one partition assigned ( C ) and a DVD ( D ), so I pick drive E. In fact without actually doing it, I think you can let windows pick the drive letter when you are assigning the drive letter and you won't even have to enter a drive letter unless for some reason you wanted to pick a drive letter like K, S, Z, etc., for some reason.

When I upgraded from Win 8.1 to Win 10 one of my external drives I use for backups would not appear in Windows Explorer anymore...forget whether it was my WD Passport or a Seagate drive. Anyway, once I reassigned the Drive letter all was happy again. And this is not a problem unique to Win 8.X or Win 10...it can happen to earlier version of Windows such as Win 7 and XP also...and I have had it happen a couple of times in those earlier versions over many years. Just something happens which causes Windows to not automatically assign a drive letter, but once you use disk management to assign the letter it remembers it from then on out.

Once again, assigning the drive letter does not delete any data...no harm is caused.

[giddyup]

...but it's not visible in the Hard Disk Drives where I would normally be able to see it and open it up. All the files (movies) are still viewable and playable through the Media player, but just not on the laptop. Why?

Not sure what you mean by the "Media Player?" Is that separate device from your computer or media player software on your computer? I expect you are talking a separate device.

Anyway, maybe a drive letter is not being automatically assigned to the drive by Windows. This problem can occur in all versions of Windows...it's not a common problem but it does occur for unknown reasons...some hidden configuration setting gets corrupted probably in the depths of Windows or on the drive. If no drive letter is automatically being assigned, you can fix this by using the Windows Disk Management. Several ways to get to the Disk Management menu but lets go the short way.

In the Run command window type Diskmgmt.msc. This will immediately take you to the Disk Management module like the below snapshot I took of my menu with my Passport drive connected (I picked the name of My Passport). Now, is the drive shown in the windows, and if it is shown does it also include a drive letter assignment (i.e., drive letter, D, E, etc. assigned)? If there is no drive letter assigned Windows Explorer will not see it so you can't see/view the drive. It will still show in your Device Manager but Windows File Explorer will not be able to see the drive unless it has a Drive Letter assigned.

Capture.JPG

If no drive letter is assigned you can assign one without negatively impacting any data...nothing is deleted, formatted, etc...just a drive letter is assigned which was suppose to occur automatically but didn't for some reason. Like where it shows "My Passport" in my example above with the Drive Letter E assigned, click on that area to highlight it, then right click to pull up a menu, select Change Drive Letter and Path, and then select Add to assign a drive letter. Pick a letter that comes after any other drives/partition you have in the computer to include any DVD. Like me I only only have one internal drive with one partition assigned ( C ) and a DVD ( D ), so I pick drive E. In fact without actually doing it, I think you can let windows pick the drive letter when you are assigning the drive letter and you won't even have to enter a drive letter unless for some reason you wanted to pick a drive letter like K, S, Z, etc., for some reason.

When I upgraded from Win 8.1 to Win 10 one of my external drives I use for backups would not appear in Windows Explorer anymore...forget whether it was my WD Passport or a Seagate drive. Anyway, once I reassigned the Drive letter all was happy again. And this is not a problem unique to Win 8.X or Win 10...it can happen to earlier version of Windows such as Win 7 and XP also...and I have had it happen a couple of times in those earlier versions over many years. Just something happens which causes Windows to not automatically assign a drive letter, but once you use disk management to assign the letter it remembers it from then on out.

Once again, assigning the drive letter does not delete any data...no harm is caused.

I'd already done what you recommended by reading some You tube posts. I'm not that computer savvy so it was a bit daunting, but it seems to have worked, As well as allocating a letter, I changed the drive from offline to online, and then I only had to change the name to "My Passport" where it shows up in My Computer. However, have lost all the data (movies) that I had loaded, but at least it's now working. Thanks. Only question, why did it change, the external HD was working perfectly fine before?

Edited December 13, 2015 by giddyup

[Pib]

I don't know what you mean by changing the drive from online to offline....or how you do/did that. Can you give more specifics on that?

Just adding a drive letter did not/will not affect any data on the drive. You sure you didn't do a format/delete & readd a partition?

The "My Passport" name the more I think about it was probably the "label" (a.k.a., name) already given to the drive when I bought it...or maybe I did rename/label it My Passport. Giving a drive a new name/label does not affect any data either. You could rename/relabel a drive name a hundred times a day and it wouldn't affect an data on the drive....kinda like if you did a name change...other than the name change nothing else happenned in how you think, how you look, etc.

You ask why did the drive stop working/lose its drive letter? Maybe some hidden configuration file got corrupted on the drive. Maybe a corrupted Windows config file. And maybe another device you possibly used the drive with, like if the Media Player your mentioned earlier is really another hardware device, caused the problem. Who really knows....but I think it has something to do Windows configuration/registry files.

But I do know the Drive Lettering issue which has been around since Windows has been around can cause the problem you were experiencing. And like in my earlier example, the last time the problem raised its head for me was when I did the Win 8.1 to Win 10 upgrade on 29 Jul 15...and the external drive was not even hooked up during that upgrade process. I noticed the problem when hooking up the external drive to do a image backup of my new Win 10 and my external drive could not be seen...it was showing in Device Manager but not File Explorer...and if it don't show up in File Explorer then other programs running on Windows probably won't be able to see it either. So that is telling me there was some Windows configuration issue caused during the upgrade and by reassigning the drive letter it cleared that issue up. Yeap, that was not my first experience with a drive letter assignment magically disappearing over my years of using Windows XYZ.

If I had the number of drives that people scraped/returned merely because they were not showing in Windows due to a drive letter assignment issue (which can be easily and quickly resolved) I would have a Mt Everest sized mountain of drives.

One more thing you might want to do to make sure drive "automount" is enablde in Windows which by default it is, is to do the following:

From your Windows Start icon select "Command Prompt (Admin)", then type "diskpart" and press return, the type "automount enable" and press return. This will set Windows automount to enable if case it wasn't already.

Edited December 13, 2015 by Pib

[giddyup]

I don't know what you mean by changing the drive from online to offline....or how you do/did that. Can you give more specifics on that?

Just adding a drive letter did not/will not affect any data on the drive. You sure you didn't do a format/delete & readd a partition?

The "My Passport" name the more I think about it was probably the "label" (a.k.a., name) already given to the drive when I bought it...or maybe I did rename/label it My Passport. Giving a drive a new name/label does not affect any data either. You could rename/relabel a drive name a hundred times a day and it wouldn't affect an data on the drive....kinda like if you did a name change...other than the name change nothing else happenned in how you think, how you look, etc.

You ask why did the drive stop working/lose its drive letter? Maybe some hidden configuration file got corrupted on the drive. Maybe a corrupted Windows config file. And maybe another device you possibly used the drive with, like if the Media Player your mentioned earlier is really another hardware device, caused the problem. Who really knows....but I think it has something to do Windows configuration/registry files.

But I do know the Drive Lettering issue which has been around since Windows has been around can cause the problem you were experiencing. And like in my earlier example, the last time the problem raised its head for me was when I did the Win 8.1 to Win 10 upgrade on 29 Jul 15...and the external drive was not even hooked up during that upgrade process. I noticed the problem when hooking up the external drive to do a image backup of my new Win 10 and my external drive could not be seen...it was showing in Device Manager but not File Explorer...and if it don't show up in File Explorer then other programs running on Windows probably won't be able to see it either. So that is telling me there was some Windows configuration issue caused during the upgrade and by reassigning the drive letter it cleared that issue up. Yeap, that was not my first experience with a drive letter assignment magically disappearing over my years of using Windows XYZ.

If I had the number of drives that people scraped/returned merely because they were not showing in Windows due to a drive letter assignment issue (which can be easily and quickly resolved) I would have a Mt Everest sized mountain of drives.

One more thing you might want to do to make sure drive "automount" is enablde in Windows which by default it is, is to do the following:

From your Windows Start icon select "Command Prompt (Admin)", then type "diskpart" and press return, the type "automount enable" and press return. This will set Windows automount to enable if case it wasn't already.

Capture.JPG

I deleted the data from the WD drive utilities when I was trying to get the computer to read the ext. HD, no problem, it's all available to download again. The online/offline is in the first box alongside the HD in Device Manager. Maybe I didn't need to touch that, but I can change it back easily enough. I changed the name to My Passport where the device is shown in My Computer, it doesn't affect anything, it just makes it easy to identify.

[Pib]

One more bit of info...see this info on the diskpart command. Notice one area where it gives some info on one of the parameters (the scrub parameter...I'm not recommending the scrub command use as that nukes some stuff) that can be used with the diskpart command. Notice how it talks "mount point directories and registry settings" which is talking about Windows configuration files. If the info in those files get corrupted or changed for some unknown reason, then a drive might not be visible in Windows anymore although there is nothing wrong with that drive...it just a Windows configuration issue...not a drive issue...no need to take the drive back wanting a refund/warranty repair.

Removes volume mount point directories and registry settings for volumes that are no longer in the system. This prevents volumes that were previously in the system from being automatically mounted and given their former volume mount point(s) when they are added back to the system.

Interesting about the Offline/Online setting...I hadn't noticed that Offline/Online setting below. As like most folks I expect, rarely deal with the Disk Management Tool in Windows except maybe when getting a new drive.

From googling and pulling up this post, setting a drive to offline basically makes it to where Windows can't see it...then click Online and it can again. So I guess maybe some configuration setting could get messed up to where the drive still has a drive letter assigned but it set to Offline. Interest...I'll try to keep that in mind the next time when I can see one of my drive and there will surely be a next time. But yea, you don't want to set the drive to Offline unless you want to block access to it until you set it back Online.

[giddyup]

You can understand why I prefer to use a flash drive, as long as it has enough memory, over the external HD. The My Passport (both of them) has really been a headache and probably will never get used much in the future.

Edited December 13, 2015 by giddyup

[DogNo1]

Be aware that flash drive drive letters can get lost too. Just knowing to open Disk Management and making sure that a drive letter is assigned should solve most of your future configuration problems. You should then only have a problem if the drive fails or the cable connection fails. A while back, a poster lost all of his data during an attempted copy process because his cable was not properly connected. If your drive is not working properly, always check the cable connection first.

[Pib]

Last night I was playing around with two Seagate drives in generic external USB 3.0 enclosures (enclosures I bought separately)...some people just refer to these as just USB drives...but take the drives out of the enclosures and you can install them internally on a computer's SATA connector....they are actually SATA 3 drives using a USB 3 enclosure box to interface with a computer's USB 3 port. One was a SSD and one a HDD. The playing around started with some cloning in mirroring all the info on the SSD drive to the HDD as I plan to put the SSD in a new laptop I should be buying soon and the HDD will go back in another laptop. Cloning went fine.

Anyway, during this process I hook and unhooked the drives from the computer several times (and the drives were always recognized by the computer). I then just started playing around like doing some speed testing on the SSD. Both enclosures use the same type detachable USB cable except one enclosure has a cable 12 inches long and the other one at least twice that length....to the best of my knowledge both USB cables are wired the same, they definitely have the same exact connectors on each end, and the only known difference is length of the cables. I wanted to see if the speed test results were improved by using the shorter of the two cables--and it was by a few percent but it revealed something else described below.

So, I first do a speed test with one drive using the longer cable....then I properly eject/remove the drive from the computer's USB connector like I've done many, many times....then I installed the shorter cable and hooked the drive back to the computer but the computer would not recognize the drive. I unhook it, and plug it back into the computer a couple of times trying to get the drive recognized. Still no dice. Even using Disk Management didn't' show the drive. I then decided to power down the computer and instead of shutting off in a few seconds it took a good minute...something was causing it to hang. I turned the computer back on, tried plugging that drive in again with the shorter cable still on it, and finally after about 20 seconds it was recognized by the computer....normally it only takes about 3 to 5 seconds. I unhooked the cable and then plugged in back in the computer to see if it would be recognized again...and it was in 3 to 5 seconds this time..it was back to working normal.

Just something about switching from a longer to shorter cable confused the heck out of my computer to where it would not recognize that external drive. Maybe the two cables are not identically wired...but both cables work with the drive.

I only mention this since I read quite a few posts where people were using an external USB drive on another device (usually some type of TV or gaming console or another computer) and although it use to work fine on your computer when hooking it back to your the computer one day the computer just don't can recognize the drive any more. Some of those same posts even said after letting the drive lay around for a few weeks/months and then using it again the computer would now recognize it again no problem. Just wonder if some of these posts a different USB cable was being used which for some reason confused a certain computer in being able to recognize the drive, corrupted Windows configuration/registry settings which deal with recognizing a drive, but then that file corruption gets fixed somehow (maybe a Windows update, maybe automatically by Windows, maybe reloading a driver, maybe having to reassign a drive letter, etc) allowing the drive to be recognized again.

Yeap, computers and associated equipment like external drives can be frustrating sometimes and develop problems/issues that just don't make sense...not only to the layman but to so called experts also.

Like I mentioned earlier I bet if all drives which were returned due to being bad just because they were recognized by the computer but the drive is perfectly fine and instead it's a Windows configuration setting/corruption issue, we would have a pile of drives the size of Mt Everest.

[impulse]

Burned up my first 2 WD external drives in Thailand in no time at all.

Haven't had a single problem with 4 Seagates and a Samsung I've bought since then. My 2 Toshiba's that I had before moving to Thailand 5 years ago? Still not missing a beat.

Wouldn't even take the WD's back for warranty, because the data was worth 20x what the drive was worth...

Edited December 14, 2015 by impulse

[Pib]

Knock on wood (my head) but it's been a long time since I've had a hard drive failure....probably around 15 years. I think I've had two drive failures over my computer life...both were Seagate drives...probably failed in the 1990's...both were in desktops. Drives now days are much, much more reliable than drives from yesteryear.

Here's a link providing some drive reliability stats of certain manufacturers....Seagate has the worst reliability in this particular study. HGST (now a WD company) has the best reliability...WD and Toshiba are not far behind...and then Seagate in the distance.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-for-q2-2015/

Edited December 14, 2015 by Pib

[impulse]

In fairness, I should probably disclose that my 2 WD HD's that failed were purchased during the big floods when I suspect they were probably shipping every unit they could to meet contractual obligations around the world.

I always figured they had to go the the lowest of the low bins for the domestic external HD market during that time, and I ended up buying what would have effectively been culls at any other time.

Edit: Which begs the question, since a lot of HD's are manufactured in Thailand, does the Thai market get the cream of the crop, the dregs, or about the same quality as the export markets?

In China, I found that the better products were usually exported and the rejects were sold into the domestic market (But that didn't include HD's)

Edited December 14, 2015 by impulse