Tip & How-To about Western Digital Passport 320GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive

Troubleshooting WD Passport 320 GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drives

If you plug your Western Digital Passport External USB 2.0 hard drive to a USB socket in your computer system, & the hard drive's light is on but there is no spinning sound, then you might be experiencing a defective interface circuitry.

These devices have a USB-to-SATA interface inside their enclosure. If you can find another enclosure with a similar interface (or buy a new enclosure), disassemble your hard disk enclosure, get the hard drive out & attach it to the interface in the other enclosure & see if it works.

Another possibility is that the interface could be fine, but the hard drive itself died. To test this possibility, try attaching the hard drive itself (after getting it out of its enclosure) directly to a PC. Since the hard drive is a SATA drive, you will be able to do this easily.

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is this a plug and play drive?

In most computers that are encountered, devices that are plugged into the USB ports are "plug & play" capable. There are numerous scenarios that can turn this function off inadvertantly such as a virus, data corruption or driver changes. In order to fix the issue and make an external device, such as a Western Digital Passport Elite hard drive "plug & play" capable, a user will have to make a few system changes. Click "Start" and "Run," then type gpedit.msc Click on "Administrative Templates," from the tree then click on the "System" folder. Double click on "Turn off Autoplay." Select the "Disabled" option and ensure it applies to all drives. Hope this helps,

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Dec 12, 2012 • Western Digital 500GB ELEMENTS 500 GB USB...

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my computer does not reconize my 1T WD passport. when i plug the USB in to the computer. my passport DOES NOT appear on my computer. why is this happing?

I had the same problem with my buddy's computer and he was plugging it in to a USB Ver 1.1 socket and it has to be used in a USB 2.0 socket or a add on PCI to USB 2.0 board.

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Feb 18, 2011 • Western Digital My Passport Essential SE...

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My Western Digital Passport 80GB Hard Drive is no longer detected when I plug it in. The power light is on, the drive is running but it is not detected on either of my computers running Windows Vista. There is no drive letter assigned or any sign of the device under the Device Manager.

Any external disk-drive as small as 80GB is probably "out-of-warranty" -- it's likely that the disk-drive inside the enclosure has "died".

You have two options, not mutually exclusive:
* exercise the Western Digital "Customer Loyalty" program -- find the serial-number of your Passport, and access WD's web-site to buy a new Passport, citing the old serial-number to qualify for a significant discount on your purchase;
* open the enclosure, disconnect the disk-drive from the USB-to-disk-drive adapter, buy a new, compatible, disk-drive, and connect it to the USB-to-disk-drive adapter, to "frankenstein" it, creating a "new" external storage-device.

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Oct 24, 2010 • Western Digital Passport WDXML800UE...

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