A 2015 WD "My Passport Ultra 3 TB drive (USB_3) does show the slowly flashing light when plugged into USB_2 on my PC but does not show up in the list of drives.
I bought this drive years ago but did not really use it.
I don’t think I removed any of the original software.
I did install WD_Discovery_for_Windows and WD Backup.
Can anyone help to get this drive to work as a backup drive?
Yes, it’s really irritating when you’re trying to access data through a USB, and it’s always showing an error that “USB Device not recognized”. There could be many factors that can lead to this issue, such as:
The corrupt or unstable USB driver
Windows is missing important updates
USB controllers may have become unstable or corrupt
Corrupt USB drive or partition
You can try below options as a solution to fix your USB drive:
Restart your system
Try different PC/Laptop
Re-install USB drivers in your system
Unplug all connected USB drives
Use data recovery software
Data recovery from a faulty or unreadable storage drive is possible and also not that much challenging if you have the right tools with you, such as trustworthy data recovery software. Here, I recommend you to use Stellar Data Recovery Professional Software as it is one of the most reliable & easy to use data recovery software that enables the user to recover their lost or deleted data from corrupted, unresponsive or accidentally formatted drive and even recover lost partitions of the drive.