i plan on purchasing WD 750GB My Passport Essential HD, would i have similar problems that you guys seem to have with the cable?
RE: āBut it isnāt a proprietary cable. It is mini-USB. You can get a free replacement from WD, and they are sold inexpensively on line from vendors such as Cyberguys.ā
The connector on my new Passport Essentials 2.5" 1TB is NOT mini-USBā¦and I bet these other folks arenāt eitherā¦everyone has seen those.
Mine has is the newr MICRO-USB B connectorā¦Like this: Link Here
It is not proprietary, but I had never seen them before. They are supposed to replace the mini and be the new standard. Mine works fine, and you Can find them a lot of places cheap. Just be sure to get Micro-USB B (not A).
just got my 500 gb my passport in february 2010, and cable is all messed up, i have to actually hold the cable to even get a connectionā¦ i have registred my product, i have no receiptā¦ will they replace my cable??
I guess they will. When I wrote to them they immediately asked my address saying they would send a new cable that would solve my problem. They did not ask any documents. In the meantime I had already purchased a micro usb retractable cable on Amazon for about ten dollars. I sent the address to them, but since I live in Japan they told me to contact their Japanese office. Actually I bought my HD abroad because the dollar/yen conversion was favorable even including the shipping costs. I ended up not contacting anybody in order to avoid the hassle of having to explain all this in Japanese, plus they are probably not as aware of this problem here in Japan. Oh well, the retractable cable works fine and packs tidy and compact in my backpack. I like that the thickness of this retractable cable is thinner, seems to make more sense for such a delicate connector, so the wire is more flexible and moving it around will not put mechanical stress on the connector contacts.
Hi guys,
I have the same problem with the micro (thatās micro, not mini, USB cable). Iāve just written to WD to ask for a replacement cable. The silly micro connector just doesnāt hold to the port. Hopefully the replacement will work, otherwise Iāll have to cannibalize the drive.
I would contact WD for a replacement.Ā You can do so either by phone or email.
To Contact WD for Technical Support
http://support.wdc.com/contact/index.asp?lang=en
Well i called the WD support in my country India and they said they wonāt replace the usb cble, all i said that if people do not buy your hard disk because of the faulty usb cable then u lose business.
Well i m not recommending WD to people i know atleast.
ps: not here to express my frustation, just wanted to say that WD DOES NOT REPLACE the USB Cables which come with thte hard disk
I have had no end of issues with the cable connection and certainly cannot use a USB extension cable, the light on the drive will light up but the PC will not recognise the drive. I was interested in the comment about removing the virtual CD in the firmware, does this help? and if so how do I do it?
My cable started to smoke when i first connected it last night andmelted part of the outside plastic of the cable.
I have emailed off Western Digital
however as i got the hard drive for my birthday i have no receipts.
So now i can not access my documents which i need to urgently for work /school:(
I have not been able to find anywhere locally either that sells a cable which would work with the hard drive.
I am in melb, aus
Hay Lostsoul201
I got a new cable from Dicksmith have a look for their Milkshake Retractable Cable USB to Mini/Micro HERE
If your problem is the USB cable not maintaining a good connection, you can contact WD via their website and request an updated USB cable.Ā I have personally done this, as has countless others who own these drives.Ā In my case, WD shipped me a newer cable in two days absolutely free of charge.Ā The updated cable will work properly for you, as its connector is built better and snaps into the driveās USB port with authority.Ā Be sure to include the exact make/model of your drive.Ā Good luck and take careā¦
regards
Steve
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uh guys i bought a new WD My passport 750 GB drive (yea with the micro usb thingy) Essentials SE, usb 2.0
I have 3 partitions on there, the My Passport Partition formatted to Mac OSX HFS+ Journaled, NTFS, formatted to FAT16or32 canāt remember (the partition is for containing MacDrive 8 with the keygen so that my pc computers could read the My Passport partition) and Time Machine (for obvious reasons lol 
) When it came in the mail i kinda flipped out at the micro usb thing, but then relaxed cuz it is awesome! I tlly understand y they chose it! it has these little hooks that hold it in, like today it kinda fell off my bed(I have a bunker and im on top, desk on bottom) and if not for the beastly micro cableās hooks, iād have a DOA drive rite now! ily WD (no **bleep** intended) lol. The only cons i have about it is that I only have 1, the one WD gives you is very short ( I can understand that cuz they think that you are probably going to use it with a netbook which i am using it with but i also use it with my desktops. Lastly, and I only found out about it rite now, If you plug it in to your computer sideways, it shorts it out and the computer shuts down/reboots.
Sincerely David
P.S. I have no macs, I hackintoshed all of my PCās
Netbook - Asus eee pc 1000he blue edition
Desktops - Custom pc 1( amd operatron 132, on asus a8n-sli premium, in antec sonata 2 case(can sell pm me or reply)
[deleted for advertising]
I bought a 320gb my passport 6 months agoā¦ I never expected that something so small as a cable would make me so disappointed in paying my money to WD. I canāt discribe the frustration iāve been in after trying multiple times to transfer large files and the drive disconnects from the computer because of the loose cable. Even if I hit my hand on the other side of the table, the hard drive disconnects. This isnāt practical at all!!! I canāt believe they made such a nice hard drive and messed up with the cableā¦ I tried the micro-usb cable from my LG phone and works perfect nowā¦ Very very disappointed. Next time I think iāll try some other company. Thanksā¦
I am yet _ ANOTHER _ user with this problem! I received this drive yesterday (Nov 8 2010) and have this exact problem. There are complaints in this forum about this problem from a year ago! ā¦ At what point does Western Digital say āHey, we have to send out āthe better cableā after every second person buys one of these drives, why donāt we just update the cable in the original packageā ā¦ I donāt get it ā¦
I have the 1tb Passport Essential SE USB 3.0 ā¦ a different cable than most people, but with the same problem ā¦ The drive just randomly disconnects and reconnects every 30 to 60 minutes. I have done the āusual suspectsā like
-
Reboot
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Try a different port
-
Try a different computer
-
Upgrade all firmware and software ā¦
Nothing works! I WISH I would have seen this complaint thread before I bought the drive. I am sure Iād be sitting here with a Seagate as we speak. But like I stated earlier, with SO MANY problems of the same type, youād think WD would have remedied this problem by now. I have been a WD customer for 15 years with basically no complaints, but this might end it all. Every half hour hearing the Windows 7 āBee Boop ā¦ Booo Beepā USB connect, disconnect sound! Especially if it is in the middle of a file transfer! Very frustrating to say the least.
Are you sure this isnāt some PC power condition? Go into Device Manager in USB right click on the hubs properties then power management and uncheck allow computer to turn off. Then go into advanced power options and find selective suspend and disable it and see if that helps.
Joe
Thanks for the tip Joe_S ā¦
That is one of the many things that I tried ā¦ I usually uncheck āallow computer to turn this device off to save powerā for all USB hubs and Network Adapters ā¦
I have to say, I am not sure if that was the problem or not, it certainly could be (as I tried more than one ārepair attemptā at once as I became impatient) ā¦ However, the problem has subsided and it has only disconnected once in the last 24 hours ā¦
The good people at WD have already shipped a replacement USB 3.0 to Micro B cable just in case ā¦
Thanks again ā¦
I bought this drive a year ago. Since then, I contacted wd-support three times for a new cable. each time they sent me a new one and each time the cable failt some weeks later. [deleted]!
In all honesty a cable is just a piece of hardware if you constantly plug and unplug it probably is going to wear quickly. I also suspect WD may have a vendor problem since these show up in batches then fade way for a while. I had a external DVD drive the USB port in it went bad hooked up to the desktop! The cable was probably unpluged 3 or 4 times at the most.
Iām having this problem as wellā¦I been living with it for about a year when I brought my 750GB drive last year. I usual keep my laptop & drive on my lap when Iām on the computerā¦so if Iām copying like 7GBs of data or videoā¦I have to sit still for so freaking long. Not making a move maybe except to move my handsā¦even if I do I have to move them carefully like I have a timebomb around me.
I donāt know who made this kind of cable or why? But this is just badā¦why make the cable smallerā¦for āstyleā?
I thought there was something just wrong with my cableā¦and everyone elseās was fineā¦But I see Iām not alone.
WD know they messed up on this kind of cableā¦I smell a recallā¦
Have you contacted WD about the cable? Others have gotten replacements.
