Because a USB device was drawing too much power

This is my first desperate post.  I am a professional photographer.  I have no knowledge regarding the capabilities, ins&outs, or technical components of any external storage.  I have always bought and been happy with the WD Passport for Macs and have filled many of them with my images for back up and storage.

I had two WD MY Passport fo Mac(s) hooked up to my MacBook Pro a couple of months ago.  I decided one day to try using a hub instead of plugging them directly into my computer to create a little more workspace around my computer for my notes, etc.

When i plugged in the hub, i received this death message:

“Because a USB device was drawing too much power from your computer, one or more of your devices have been disabled. To prevent damaging your computer, the USB device drawing too much power may have also been disabled. When you disconnect the device drawing too much power, your other USB devices will be enabled again.”

From there, I have accomplished nothing.  I used the two to back each other up, then killed them both at the same time. 

I changed the cords, one a USB 2.0, the other a USB 3.0, I got another hub that split the power, I got one that has an independent power source, i followd every direction possible that can be googled.

I then took the drive to a local computer company and he sent my drives to two different data recovery companies.  Apparently, the USB 3.0 connected drive caused the biggest problem, hence the transfer from one company to the next.  Long story short, I have had nothing recovered and lots of frustration because i am not an expert on what anyone is talking about so I don’t know if i’m being toyed with or ripped off. 

I was desperate to recover the data at the time, the drives are not recognized in Disk Utility, nothing is visible.  The second recovery company (I have all correspondence between myself and the “middle man” (the local guy who was “helping me”) sent an outline of data that they thought they could recover from the USB 3.0 Passport and it was about 2% of the data on the drive, therefore, I said NO THANK YOU, because I have thousands of images on the drive and needed far more for the $1600 that they wanted for recovery. 

 I’m going to copy and paste my correspondence with “the middle man” for better explanation of the details regarding my issue.  I don’t know if it will be helpful or not, but i don’t know what else to do anymore. 

Is there a way that I can recover my own data?  If yes, how?  I can follow step by step instructions, I just don’t have any and I dont know that I should trust anything I read online, since I am no longer sure that I can even trust the humans that are “helping” me.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.  The recovery company still has my USB 3.0 drive, apparently (nicknamed Silverado) and I now have the USB 2.0 drive (nicknamed Old Silva) in my possession again.

[Deleted]

Were you actually sure that anything was wrong with your drives. That is not a ‘message of death’, its a warning from your Mac. It appears that after this warning your USB ports on the mac may not function and some sort of reset may be needed but I can’t see that the both drives will necessarily be broken. Not a Mac expert so I will let somebody more knowledgeable give an answer. 

Well, I did plug both drives into my iMac and got the same error message.  The drives also do not show up when plugged into the iMac.

Sadly a lot of computers use barely adequet power suppiles. It is recommended not to connect use a hub with external drives. Personally I would use a powered drive over a USB powered one if possible.

Joe