WD External Hard Troubles

[The Godfather]

My Western Digital 320 External My Book hard drive isn't being recognized by my computer. It was working fine using the USB, i left the country for 3 months, and my pc was turned off. I came back and now it won't recognize it. Also, when connected to the PC, the drive won't turn off using the button. I tried connecting it to my laptop but it still wouldn't work. I also tried reinstalling drivers but no difference. Pls help me, i have 140 gigs of information on there.

Thanks in advance.

 

[The Godfather]

No one knows? I contacted Western Digital, but they were of no help, they just kept asking me questions and in the end provided no answers.

 

[IamDavid]

These My Books are straight up JUNK!!! Just lost all me home movies/pictures. Drive was less than a year old. Who cares if they replace it, can't replace my info.

Sorry for that rant... Mine did that off and on. Had to connect it to another PC and use the little icon on the bottom to "safely remove hardware". Not sure why but it worked every time.

 

[disports]

hmm that's odd, i have two of them 500 gb, older ones, one is three years old, the other is like six months and working fine.

 

[The Godfather]

=((

 

[santz]

damn, my 160gb wd passport external drive is doing the same thing now as your HD, it connects but does not show up on 'my computer', it shows up in device manager, and it says 'unrecognized drive' in disk management

what to do

i just want to connect it one last time, to get my data off, ( any means whatsoever) and then trash the hard drive

 

[RebateMonger]

You could luck out and it might only be the USB controller portion of the drive. Disassemble the housing, remove the drive, and hook the drive up directly to the drive controller of a PC.

If it's readable at all, you can try one of the data recovery programs (such as GetDataBack). Or send the drive to a professional data recovery house.

Don't trust a single disk drive of any type with anything that's important. Hard drives ALL fail eventually, and brand-name external hard drives, with poor cooling and potential rough treatment, are particularly susceptible to damage.

Whoops. This is a really old thread. It would have been better to start a new thread for a new problem. Regarding the Passport drive, that drive MAY use a tiny ZIF ribbon cable connector rather than a standard SATA connector. I haven't had one apart yet.

 

[maziwanka]

Originally posted by: santz
damn, my 160gb wd passport external drive is doing the same thing now as your HD, it connects but does not show up on 'my computer', it shows up in device manager, and it says 'unrecognized drive' in disk management

what to do

i just want to connect it one last time, to get my data off, ( any means whatsoever) and then trash the hard drive

im running into the same problem with a 250 gig passport that's less than a year old. i really would love to take the data off. they're shipping another one to me, so at least hdd wise ill have something else. what a pos though