WD "my passport" just passed away

WD External and Portable SSD External SSD for macOS
1

Hi all

My WD “my passport” (500 giga) just passed away without any sort of cause. It was just connected and working, and the next moment it unmounted by itself and was dead ever since. It’s not the drive that crashed or so, just the whole instrument. The led light is just dead, no hum either…total faillure ! Even when trying the USB connection instead, same result.

Oh yeah, and I’d like to get my data back :s

Any ideas ?

2

Did you check on disk utility?

If the drive is showing there you can attempt to repair the partition with First Aid

3

yeah, tried that, even system profiler, nothing at all shows up, just totally dead.

It’s a Passport Studio drive btw

4

If you happen to have another computer ( windows ) you can try to update the firmware

Some users have been able to get it back to work

5

ouch, i’m afraid it’s game over.

I only have a G4 desktop besides, so I thought I’d plug it in there and see if something happens. I used the usb port, and let it sit for about 15 minutes. When I cheched it again it was red hot, and the cover now has a bump due to the plastic started melting. And there’s a clear smell of burned substance coming from it. It clearly had a short circuit . What surprises me however, is that I didn’t notice anything of the sort when it failed whilst being connected to the firewire port.

6

This is not a difficult repair sobie. The board is fried, and needs to be swapped for a functional one with some adaptive info adjustments. Any recovery place will be able to help.

7

hard thing here is that I still have warranty on the drive, and I will lose that by screwing around. Are you sure the drive and thus the data are unharmed ?

8

sobie wrote:

hard thing here is that I still have warranty on the drive, and I will lose that by screwing around. Are you sure the drive and thus the data are unharmed ?

Contact WD and explain that you have data that needs to be recovered prior to RMA. WD understands that, and is very supportive of this subject usually. Your data is intact and there since your drive is not spinning.