Ok i have 2 wd passpoet hard drives. The 1st is 80g & 2nd is 250g.
Neither works anymore. The 80g stopped working the day i got the 250g. I unplugged it and put in the 250g. I plugged the 80g back up to transfer the files and i got no response from the 80g. Now the 250g just stopped working. I usually keep it plugged in. One day i went to "My Computer" saw the drive but could not access my files. So i unplugged it and reinserted it. It says drive is recognized but the drive letter wont show.
I had a 120gb that died. Now I have a 250gb which is dying - only mounts 1 in 5 times maybe. A colleague has one which has died completely - attaches in XP Device Manager but won't mount. Another colleague has one which is like mine - fails, fails, fails, then maybe mounts. We're only talking a few months here.
When I found this product I loved it - small, light, neat, worked.
But ultimately they are evidently not up to being carried about in a laptop bag and used in the way one buys a product like this for.
I am forced to conclude that the WD passport series is fundamentally ****. DO NOT BUY. If you already have one, make sure you have everything on it backed up, because it will die on you.
They look like great value but they are simply not reliable.
This is mostly a power issue, but if you use a hub it may be latency as well. Some USB ports limit power to 400-500ma per port, the Passport Essential needs a bit more than 1000ma and won't work at all with these computers. Other USB ports/hubs limit the total power available for all devices combined... this is why, in your case, you can use one drive, but not both.
FYI, higher speed devices also tend to need shorter cables due to latency. (Light & electricity travels about 1 foot, or 30 cm, in a billionth of a second; this limits the size of high speed devices. In layman's terms, latency is the Brontosaurus effect, since the head takes a while to talk to the tail.)
To boost power, Western Digital recommends using a 22" USB 2.0 Power Booster Cable (WDCA029RNN) to combine the power of two USB ports into the one Passport Essential USB port--it is also a bit longer than the original 18 inch cable. For all EXCEPT the black Passport Essential drive, you may also the WD Passport™ Power Supply Adapter (WDPS021 for the US voltage version). See Western Digital knowledge base ID 1296 for more on this issue.
Hope this helps!
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Bought an 80GB WD Passport. Same problem everyone else seems to be having. One day it just stopped working. The light turns on but the drive won't spin up and the system doesn't see it at all. I used it for a backup and I rebuilt my system. Now the machine is built and I can't get my files off the "backup". Piece of ****.
I have the same problem. My computer knows when I connect my WD 80GB but it doesn't show up anywhere where I can open it.
DON'T EVER BUY THESE PIECES OF ****! I"M ON TO MY SECOND ONE IN 2 WEEKS AND THEY HAVE BOTH DIED ON ME. HAVE LOST AN ENTIRE SEMESTER WORTH OF FILM FOOTAGE FOR UNIVERSITY. GO F**K YOURSELF WESTERN DRIVE!
A similar problem occurs with my 250GB WD drive. I have had it about 9 months but only recently is it starting to mess me about. After doing a disk check, approx half the files became corrupted. Then 1 week later my laptop crashed and i had to emergency reboot it. After I did this, the WD passport just makes a patterned whirring noise (2 short low souns and one higher longer sound) for about 5 times then stops. The drive isnt even noticed by the computer but the blue light is steadily glowing. Part of this problem is possibly due to Vista's continued failure and alos I hadnt formatted it since I got it (to be fair I had not another device to back up my files onto).
So I am at a loss; all 500 hours of music and lots of other data is now locked into my comatose HDD. Any ideas?
What are you plugging the drives into?
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