I have a WD passport 320gb, at first it worked one of my usb. then all of sudden, it stop recognizing my WD Passport with one usd port, so i plug it in another usb then it works. and after a couple of days of plug in and plug out, it stop to work with that usb, and then put it in another usb port then it works again. but after once again me plug in and out for about a week or two it stop recognizing for that usb port, so i move it another usb port and it working again. this is my last usb port. why is my passport is not brecognizing for my other usb ports. if i plug anything eles in the usb port it work, i am scared it going to stop with all my usb. is this a driver thing?

Sometimes, portable drives need more power than a USB port provides. If this is a laptop, be sure it is plugged in to power and not running off battery. Also, if you have TWO usb plugs on the end of the wire, plug them BOTH in. This provides the extra power needed.

go into my computer it should be there

Hi,


Try to use another USB port. Verify hardware status from Device Manager. Try to Uninstall your Passport device from Device Manager and reboot your system.


Just remember to take your time and don't get nervous working on the computer. Please report back to the thread the results of your work.


Regards;
Hassan

Hi,

The reason your full sized drive works fine and the passport doesn't is that the full sized drive has it's own power supply and only uses the USB for data transfer. The Passport drive requires much more power from the USB to spin up, so, if you want to run it through the USB hub at the very least you will need to replace the USB hub with a powered one.

As for a driver, you don't need one to use the passport on XP that's why you can't find one but the Passport does require a dedicated port(2 for Amperage on some systems) or will need to be plugged into a powered hub or it simply won't get enough juice to fire up. That is the reason it won't show up.

In short, buy a powered hub, or plug it in direct. Nothing else is likely to work.


Hope this helps figure it out

Chris

we have to check in BIOS weather the "USB EMULATION" option is enabled or disabled.also if you have usb 1.0 and not usb 2.0 this external hdd will not be recognised.

Well, that IBM is from 2004, the usb port and drivers is to old for the WD 320 who requries USB 2.0. Thats why your IBM dosent recognize it, your IBM getting wrong signal from the WD thrue the old usb port.
I dont think you gona make those items to work properly togher M8, sorry

Nic

I have the 80GB WD passport and it suddenly stopped working one day.  The unit lights up but nothing else.  Finally I cracked the case open and found, as I suspected, that the drive is simply a SATA laptop drive with a SATA-to-USB conversion card built in.  I suspected that the card was **** so I disconnected it and used a USB hard drive adapter (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=3770&name=USB_Hard_Drive_Adapter) and I can read/write to the drive just fine.  Best part is that the adapter I use has its own power supply so I'm not pulling juice through the USB cable for a SATA drive. 
Even though mine "works" again I don't recommend these drives to anyone.  They're just not sturdy enough or well designed.

I had a similar problem with my WD passport 320GB. When I connected it to my laptop it never showed up on My Computer even though the blue light on the hard drive came on.
Here is what I did:  Right click on "My Computer" and click on "Manage" and then "Disk Management",. you should see your WD hard drive listed. then click on "change driver letters and paths"  and change it from the listed to another drive. I changed mine from G to F drive and it worked for me.

This could be a formatting issue, a power issue, or, if you use a hub, it may be a latency issue as well.

Mac's, in general, do not recognize NTFS formatted hard drives. Check the drive properties to see how it is formatted. If this is the case, you can try to reformat the drive as FAT32 (using the MAC) and start over. Keep in mind that you may run into partition size limitations, depending on how current your computers are set up.

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!

hmmm...it may just be a capacity and interface issue, with the flash drive being more 'accessible' through the USB interface than the wd passport.

Big issue..is the WD on USB 2.0, and the CD/DVD on USB 1.0?