I accidentally dropped my passport on the floor. When I plug it into my PC, the light on the passport comes on and the diagnostics say the passport is okay but my PC doesn’t recognize being connected to the passport drive and so I cannot access any files. Any suggestions?
A hard drive is a bit like a record player - a large vibration (such as a drop) can cause the “needle” (called the “head”) to scratch the “record” (called the “platter”) rendering at least part of the drive unreadable. In some cases this could include the part of the drive that includes the data that allows the OS to recognize the device.
The picture below shows what this damage could look like (image taken from a Google search - not sure who owns it)
In many cases you will need to go to data recovery to get access to the data on the drive when physical damage is present.
You can try the instructions in the article below, but in your case knowing that it’s most likely physical damage this may not help. I’m including a second link below to help with DR in case you want to go that route.
