For me, this is the first portable that I did not assemble myself from a SATA drive and a generic enclosure so I apologize but I am just now encountering the shock of the propietary interface involving the SES driver and so forth.
This makes me wonder if there are other hidden problems that may surface and cripple my recovery efforts in a mission critical situation in ther future.
For example, if I suspect a failure in the My Passport Slim enclosure’s USB chips, will I be able to transfer the enclosed drive to a generic USB 3.0 enclosure? Or is the drive hard wired so that it will not work in a generic USB external enclosure?
Thank you for any help you all may give. I have a return privilege available to me through the vendor but, of course, it’s time limited.
Well, nobody’s responding but I have discovered some on my own.
The USB interface is on the drive’s controller board. It’s entirely propietary. In the event a failure of the USB interface, repair is accomplished only by replacing the controller board. This is similar to board chip failure involved with any SATA or IDE hard drive.
I don’t know if WD sells boards but there are vendors who do for a reasonable price so all is not lost.
If I decide to keep this My Passport Slim 2TB, I’d like to have a spare controller board on hand to make a quick swap. I’m going to contact WD to see if I can purchase a spare. (Yes, I understand it’s under warranty but I’d rather buy a board to keep on hand rather than wait days or weeks for a warranty repair. Also, if the only warranty remedy offered is to ship a replacement drive, I will have lost everything on my platters. I might be able to save my data if I could just swap the board. Could be WD won’t replace the controller board under a warranty claim. Hmm. I wonder.)
