I have an 80gb WD passport external hard drive. Bought to store al my important! docs because my ancient laptop has no storage. How this has backfired!
Basically ever since I bought it (I think 2008?) it has been clicking & wont work sometimes, usually if I plug into the USB AFTER I turn the laptop on. Therefore to see it in my computer & stop the annoying clicking it is always plugged in to the same usb port all the time so when I switch on it starts up immediately.
In the last fortnight it stopped showing up all the time, I didnt take a lot of notice unless i wanted something off it in particular. When I moved the connector about a bit it just showed up so I thought the connector was a bit loose. Gradually this has just got more difficult to do but never for a second did it cross my mind that it would just disappear completely, which it did yesterday. Contacted WD SUPPORT by email - no reply as yet., it now st
Hav tried different USB ports, have tried holding the connectors in more steadily. Tried uninstalling all my USB ports and reinstalling the drivers. The blue light stil comes on and it still clicks for a while, however unlie previusly where it would click until I switched it off it now it changes to a whirring noise after a few minutes. I have had the message USB device not recognized, US Mass storage device has malfunctioned. I have seen it show up a few times in device manager, sometimes says there is no driver, sometimes says the device is working properly and sometimes does not show up at all on the list. Tried it on my even older PC and didnt work either. Called my local PC shop today who didnt sound very promising about being able to recover the files. Contacted Ontrack Data Recovery today & they have quoted me £495 (-10% discount) + Vat to recover the files if they can. That is with an apparent free diagnostic. They havent filled me with confidence that they can recover all the files although they said they would show what files they can recover before charging to recover. But when I asked was this their best price they said don’t worry you have 10 days from the diagnostic to decide if you want to pay this money before we delete the recovered files! With VAT and a replcacement hardrive even with ‘discount’ its going o be about £600. Now that I have to replace my laptop I don’t have £600 despite the importance of my documents. If anyone can offer a possible solution I would be so grateful all my baby photos are on here & all my work docs. I stupidly clear all my files & photos from my cameras & phones and old devices & saved them all straight to the harddrive in case I lost a phone or whatever. Basically everything. I am devestated. I couldnt care less about the device or WD I’ll never purchase anything WD again.
In looking for a solution obviously if I were able to get it going - is this going to be a one shot at it thing - do I need to get a new laptop first with more storage?
Thanks
using windows xp
