Hi,
I do have a Western Digital My Passport 2TB Portable External USB 3.0 Hard Drive Storage Black, WD P/N: WDBY8L0020BBK-01, that is used mainly for project backups, this hard drive is always stored with my valuables and has never been dropped. In June I was going to be out of the city for a few days and planned to carry my ThinkPad P17 with me, so I decided to make a backup of my projects just in case, when I plugged the USB hard drive it showed the [WD Passport] drive name and folder names but upon clicking on the folders they would not open and caused the system to hang, after a few minutes of my computer being unresponsive I unplugged the WD My Passport drive, rebooted my workstation and plugged the USB drive back, but now the system just detects a USB drive been connected, no hard drive name and no folders. There's an internal sound pattern heard from inside the drive as if it were trying to read the contents (my guess), please check post attachment with AAC audio file.

I'm currently looking for an opinion based on the sound that is heard from inside the drive and do appreciate the time taken for any comment on the subject.

Based on the drive model and the sound, the problem most likely involves damage to the head assembly and/or magnetic surface. Additionally, possible firmware issues should be considered.

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+1, heads+media damage. It's scratching

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drgn997, Where are you located maybe we can point you into the correct direction to recover the data.

DataLab RSA, I'm located in North-America (can ship the HDD within Mexico or make arrangements to get it shipped within the USA to prevent international shipping).