Failed portable HDD (WD My Passport - 1TB)

[FailedHDD]

Dear All!

I have a 1TB My Passport USB 3.0 hard disk (WDBACX0010BBK-01). I bought it about six months back. It had been working great up till now.

(The drive inside is a WD10TMVW - 11ZSMS5. It has a USB 3.0 port. Besides that there is a 12 pin connector)

The drive was attached to my computer USB port when i turned the computer on. The last time I shutdown my pc the drive was okay. After turning on the pc i opened up My Computer expecting the Unlocking Drive to show up however it didnt show up. I tried to refresh the window but it got stuck.

Now since then the drive has been showing the same behavior. When i plug the drive into the USB port:
- the usb device icon appears at the bottom right corner of the taskbar.
- the drive shows up in the System Device Manager as "WD My Passport 0740 USB Device"
- When i go to My Computer right after connecting the drive the drive doesn't show up. Upon trying to refresh the window gets stuck until i disconnect the drive from the USB port.
- The drive itself doesn't show any abnormal symptoms when connected. Its white LED blinks sometimes intermittently and sometimes constantly. I can clearly feel the drive rotating without any abnormal sound. It also gives sound as if a read/write operation is taking place.
- I do hear one single click after about 3-5 minutes of the drive being plugged in though. But none afterwards... the drive keeps rotating and LED light stays operating as well afterwards.
- When i unplug the drive i very briefly see the i:\ drive in the My Computer window.

The USB cable seems fine and so does the connector. I didn't drop the drive. However i had a practice of not removing it when shutting down or starting up my pc. Basically i was using it as a permanent external drive.

I can't really figure out the problem. Need anyone's help... Data recovery is of priority here!

Best Regards,
FailedHDD

[aaapppleee]

try it with another computer!!!
then get back to us

[FailedHDD]

i did that... my laptop has windows vista... i tried the drive on another laptop with windows 7 pro... on that system the hard disk showed a bit different behavior in terms of asking for the SES driver in the beginning... after installing the driver the WD Smartware application never appeared nor did the drive in the my computer... All the other symptoms are the same...

[labtech]

Bad sectors or even possible heads issues
Not DIY with these drives as far as recovery goes

[pcimage]

Could also be a firmware issue, still not DIY though

Might be worth checking the USB connection on the PCB though, some users are reporting that the USB connection sometimes becomes loose and makes a bad connection.