Help! Connected the WD easy store portable drive to my Mac Book and prompted me to use it with Time Machine, which I did. Then an error prompt came up, I canceled, then it disappeared of of my desktop. I unplugged it, replugged, nothing. I restarted, replugged in, nothing. Where is it? HELP!
Hi Daitaliana23,
Is the drive showing up in the Disk Utility?
Yes my 4 yr old Passport portable drive is not showing up on my desktop when I plug in. The white (power?) light on the drive comes on, but does not pulse and I don’t feel or hear the drive itself working so no signal is being detected by the computers.
I tried again several times and no luck including on other machines. I then played around with the jack and the port to the Passport. This eventually worked when the jack is pressed in firmly (much more so than needed) and the icon appeared on my desktop and the light pulsed and I could feel the innards doing their thing. I later tried again and same problem with no desktop icon. Had to fiddle again.
Not being a techno geek, but understanding a thing or two about design and the mechanics of how things work, I point my finger at a bad combination of a stiff cable for the USB and a very light gauge port connection in the Passport. I actually have not used the device much at all, a few dozen times maybe and not nearly what one would expect for normal use. Yet this internal connection (seems the power portion of the port was working but the data portion was not connecting properly or loose) is easily ‘wiggled’ and the stiff cable (likely specified to minimize cable breaks where the cable join to the plugs) easily wiggles the device port with only a a slight movement of the cable. Not well designed guys. Hope this has been fixed as I would not buy again if this design flaw still exists.
