WD Pasport USB Storage. Light goes on whirring sound but does not show connection to laptop with windows 7

If your motherboard's BIOS is properly configured for SATA controllers and you burned the Windows 7 RC1 ISO image correctly, Windows 7 should recognise and install on a SATA drive without any third-party drivers. Consult your motherboard's User's Guide for assistance in setting up the BIOS properly.

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You can download a program from WD called Data lifeguard Diagnostic for windows there is a floppy and a windows program. I made a bootable floppy and started my computer with the floppy and typed windlg.exe and followed the instructions...http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1329/~/how-to-create-a-data-lifeguard-diagnostics-bootable-cd

First things first. When you plug the drive in and power it on....does the drive spin up? If so, if you place your ear near the drive, you should hear a whirring sound of the drive platter spinning and the slight clicks of the drive arm moving.

If you don't hear this, it could be a power problem with the drive or the drive itself may be done.

If you hear the drive spinning, then most likely your data is safe. From there I would suggest trying to plug the drive into another USB port on your laptop, or even into another computer altogether. If it works there, then you most likely are having a driver issue, or perhaps a drive letter conflict.

(For instruction on how to resolve a drive letter conflict, see my response to this post: http://www.fixya.com/support/t8601787-need_driver_8gb_sandisk_cruzer)

Otherwise check the device manager in the control panel to see if you show a "USB Mass Storage Device" show up under your USB device drivers in the list. You may want to right click and uninstall it if you do see it.

If you DON'T hear the drive spinning, I would check the power first. Make sure it's receiving power (look for indicator lights etc) you might be able to remove the drive from the plastic enclosure and use a USB Drive adapter (Like one of these ) to recover data from your drive

(http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2329300&CatId=3770)

If the drive is not spinning and the power or drive adapter doesn't work, you may have a bad hard drive.

Good Luck

An external storage-device has four major components:

* the USB cable

* the power-adapter

* the disk-drive inside the enclosure

* the USB-to-disk-drive adapter inside the enclosure.

One of these components has failed.

Try a different USB cable.

Try connecting to a different USB port on your computer.

Try connecting to a USB port on a different computer.

Take a "multi-meter" and measure both the voltage and amperage output from the AC adapter, and compare with the specifications on the label on the adapter.

Open the enclosure, and remove the disk-drive, and then connect it as a "slave" disk-drive in a desktop computer, to see if it works at all.

Purchase a new, compatible, disk-drive, and install it in the enclosure, to "revive" your external storage device.

Get the part-number and serial-number from the label on your disk-drive, and access the manufacturer's web-site, and use "check warranty status", to see if they will replace the device, at minimal cost to you.

Note that W.D. has a "Customer Loyalty" program -- you can buy a new W.D. device, through the W.D. web-site, at a significant discount.

There exist commercial "data recovery" services that can try to repair your device, just long-enough to rescue and copy your files. For example, see: https://services.seagate.com/index.aspx?lng=en-US for a "no data - no charge" guarantee.

Hello! :)

Try other usb ports on your laptop. If this doesn't work, replace your usb cable.

The whirring noise is the heads trying to read hard drive and then the weird rubbing screech sound and not showing up in your pc. sounds like the drive is dead.

Your HD may have died. This is actually a common occurrence with some external enclosures with WD hard drives installed (just do a Google search, you might be surprised how many people have had the same problem as you describe...)
Your actual HD may have SATA connections (but connects to a SATA-to-USB controller). Some people have claimed that removing the drive from the enclosure and connecting directly to SATA port on motherboard yielded a successful connection.
I wouldn't recommend this, as your drive may still be under warranty and might qualify for a free or low-cost replacement.
Your USB is likely working fine. However, the drive will not show up if it is dead. I encountered a similar issue with a WD external HD recently. USB connection gives the sense that "something" might be working, but if your drive isn't seen under disk management, there's a good chance that it may have failed.
Hopefully you have your sensitive data backed up.
Good Luck!

Before deciding if you have to check your computer or the disk, you might want to try this pasport on another laptop. If the same problem occurs, change the USB cable with a new (short) one and see if the problem is still there. If it is, then the drive is fried. You may want to take the disk out of the passport, hook it onto a desktop system using the sata bus of the drive and try recover programs like recuva or similar to retrieve the data.

try to disable all firewall setings or antivirus...after try accesing frome ur command prompe if u can that the windows is blocking the hdd...uninstall any new software or driver and try again...no effect ok dowload ophcrack live cd frome google and access the hdd by force repare or scan it in surface scan that will fix ur clusters problems that might be in the back off this prob an du know wer e2 go frome there