Passport Essential SE 3.0 for Mac On but not Visible anywhere

WD External and Portable SSD External SSD for macOS
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Hi All, 

i have a 750gb 3.0 Passport Essential SE portable HD that has stopped being visible by any of my macs. It turns on because the white power light is on, solid, not blinking, but the drive makes no humming noise or makes any other indication that it is working.

I was transferring some files when the drive was moved by my wife and it unmounted itself. I got the usual, “the drive was not removed correctly” message that macs give you, and after that, i have not been able to get back in. Both me and my wife are truly upset as our wedding pictures and newborn baby pictures are on there. I thought it might be a cable issue, so i bought another drive since noone has those darn 3.0 cables nearby, but that didn’t help. I’ve been scouring the net looking for any solution, but they all seem to start with the drive at least being visible in Disk Utility, and mine is not, just powers on but nothing else…any clue or help would be greatly appreciated since the last 5 years of my life are there ;(

I have a macbook pro with Lion, a mac-mini with lion but no windows computers to try, i’ve thought about the freezer route, but that seems to be for clicking drives…

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Disconnecting the drive while transferring files is a big NO NO as you might have heard already. 

Partition table and files might be seriously corrupted. You can try connecting to a Windows computer and upgrading the firmware. Please consider checking the drive with an utility like  Test Disk although this is for Windows. 

About recovering files try this app  Mini Tool

1 Like
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Thanks for the reply. I will borrow a windows laptop and use the tools you recommended.

We did not unplug the drive on purpose, it just shifted and the cable came out just a bit, not entirely, but unfortunately the drive ejected itself. Hopefully your advice helps to recover the files, they are very important to us…

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Hope you can recover your files.

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Is the test disk hard to do?  I don’t know very much about computer.  I have the same problem it sounds like and I need to fix my HD.  Thanks