I have WD 1 TB external hard drive, which performed perfectly for just over a year. Then it began to make an audible noise as it ran and I could feel a stronger vibration. Within a short time, my Toshiba laptop has trouble recognizing it intermittently and then completely. After reading about universal USB adapters online, I bought one, thinking I’d be able to view and copy the files from the Passport to my regular hard drive. But I discovered that the Passport drive is neither a SATA or IDE drive. When removed from I see just 12 pins next to a metal connector.
I stupidly used the external drive to hold about 1000 mp3 files (to save HD space) on my laptop, in addition to backing up an equal number of text and spreadsheet files. Now it appears that there is no inexpensive way to retrieve these files.

I guess my question relates to what alternatives I have. Do adapters exist for these WD external drives? Is the problem related to my laptop? I noticed at one point that my laptop went into the “ready to sleep” mode (which also occurs when copying photos from my digital camera) and the Passport was recognized. But I am not sure how to make this happen or what purpose it serves.
These music files have a personal value to me. But given my circumstances, I can’t imagine spending hundreds of dollars to have the experts retrieve them for me/ Any useful feedback will be appreciated.

If the drive isn't recognized, there is nothing you can do without professional tools. Most likely the drive is failing to properly initialize, could have FW issues, or even a lost encryption sector (yes it's encrypted even if you didn't set a password).

Only way to get data back is using DeepSpar Disk Imager + USB addon (~$7,000) and/or PC-3000 + DE (~$6,500). Plus you'll need someone who knows how to run the tools (not for beginners on these encrypted USB models).

Unless the data has financial value (AKA you're willing to pay $500 +) scrap it. If it does have financial value to you, let me know and I'll gladly recover it for you.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company