My 5-year old (or less or more?) 4TB WD MyPassport Drive is now officially not been recognized. Any help for salvaging/reusing it would be appreciated.
- S/N: WX62D218K9NK
- P/N: WDBPKJ0040BBL-0A
- environment : was used once a week or so for backups, for its lifetime, under Windows 10 ; then for a month under windows 8.1 (the W10 computer died) and for a week under W11 (new computer)
- two months ago (W10) it started to act strangely - long time (10"-1’ to mount W10 computer)
- one month ago (W8.1) the above plus some files would not been correctly copied to it 2-4 GB files would take seconds to be copied and would not be identical to the original (no complaints from Explorer).
- I tried: changing the UBS cable (twice) - some cleaning (Isopropilic Alcohol) ; chkdsk, WD tools both reported zero errors.
- As I wanted to preserve the backups, I stopped using it and waited to an equivalent WD disk to be delivered.
- I then transferred the content of the old disk to the new one - huge time taken, with a number of deconnections during the transfer of the 3.xx TB of data
- Finally, I wanted to give it a last chance by re-formatting the disk. I tried first a thorough formatting which failed after 8 hours or so. Tried to Quick Format option, failed too in a matter of minute(s).
- Now, the disk can’t be mounted more than a few seconds - and now now, it can’t be mounted at all. Just spinning for nothing.
My guess is that the USB connector on the the disk in the case is failing badly. I know how to open the case, but what next to try and reuse the drive?
Your advice would be appreciated.
Gilbert
