Hello, Yesterday a friend of mine came over to me with exactly the same (type of) hard-disk and exactly the same symptons.She hopes I’m able to recover the files on the disk (unfortunately she didn’t make backups) Anyway, some diggin’ learned that: - There’s no valid partition table. USB connection is made, but because there are no valid partions, no drives are mounted. (BTW: I’ve tried different computers & different USB cable, good suggestion I hadn’t thought of) - Hooking it on a Windows 7 machine, the storage manager indicates that’s a uninitialised 2TB drive. And asks how to initialise it (MBR or something else). Didn’t think it’s the best thing to do it if you want to recover the files on it Hmmm, 2TB doesn’t sound right So before I screw things up or ill advise here to throw away the disk / pay a lot of money to a company to try and recover the data, I switched to linux. Ran some diagnostics and hope someone in this community has a good advise I’m afraid the problem is with het hardwarecontroller / firmware (??) of the harddisk AFAIK even unitialised disks report there correct geometry and size and are readable in linux with dd Any suggestions?? Kind regards, Cees - scanning the USB bus - mortimer: # lsusb Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 1058:070a Western Digital Technologies, Inc.

Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub mortimer: # lsusb -v -s 1:3 Bus 001 Device 003: ID 1058:070a Western Digital Technologies, Inc. Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 2.00 bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) bDeviceSubClass 0 bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 64 idVendor 0x1058 Western Digital Technologies, Inc. Hello Joe, Thank you for your reply. Ceesvn wrote: Hello Joe, Thank you for your reply.

Hello Wayne, I didn’t pull the usb cable without ‘safely removing the disk from the OS’. The drive belongs to a friend of mine, who hoped I could rescue here files after the disk was no-longer recognised by the os (on connecting).She isn’t a computer expert, but she’s smart enough to know that you shouldn’t do such a thing I’ve been playing with hard-disk partions for 15 years (installing Linux/Windows dual boot configurations etc.) This disk however is totally unaccessible. On a Linux box dd won’t read anything from it (and you can use dd to read/write raw data to unpartioned disks!) Also, tools for checking the disk geometry give wrong results. AFAIK this isn’t the result of a corrupt partition disk! So, please read my original posting (I admit layout is bad: but importing flat text in the webbased editor removed the newlines. I’ve tried several times with no succes), before suggesting I screwed up my partition table and have to repartition and reformat my friends hard-disk.

(I haven’t tried it but am for 99% sure it won’t work. Fdisk wouldn’t read the current table!) Kind Regards, Cees BTW I’ve my doubts that disconnecting a USB-drive while writing could/will corrupt your partion table. It will corrupt files, directory indices etc.

But under normal usage there’s little (if any) writing activity to the partition table (However, I’ve no intention to try on a disk it with precious data ). Wayne wrote: It absolutely can.

Anytime you’re writing data that is caching, you run the risk of corrupting files or the file system if there is a loss of power. Pulling the passport data cable out of the port without safely removing it causes an immediate loss of power. Hello Wayne, You’re talking about corrupting files and filesystems.

I my previous post I wrote I think that’s possible. I have my doubts about corrupting the partition table (bytes 446-510 in the MBR). On normal usage there is no reason to write to the MBR (other than to install a virus;)) But we’re getting off-topic here. This is the problem: On the USB drive the partiontable isn’t readable (and I guess not writable to, but I wouldn’t try it). The drive is seen by the OS, but because no partition info is given: no partitions are mounted and the WD software for decrypting the data partition isn’t started.

On a lower level: there is no data readable from the disk. On Linux, you can read raw data from an unmounted device (see de man entry for ‘dd’).

Partition table or no partition table. On this drive it doesn’t work. The drive reports itself as a 2TB drive, which is also suspicious (I can’t remember I’ve manually adjusted disk geometry settings the last 15 years) So I guess the problem ‘hardware’ related. Kind Regards, Cees. Bills wrote: If the drive is reporting itself as 2 TB’s, that’s a major drive failure.

From what I’ve been told, something has most likely gone wrong in the firmware. If you’re looking to save the data, you’re probably looking at data recovery. I suspected a firmware problem and hoped there is a utility available to ‘reflash’ the firmware. My friend is a student and the disk contained schoolwork. Data recovery might work, but (if I remember correctly) pricing starts at 200 euros for a first diagnosis So last time a spoke her she was retyping the lost documents (and i think thats in the future she makes backup copies).

Ok I just figured out what the deal was in my case. This WD USB hard drive works fine on my GF's laptop but it was giving me the 'device not recognized' error on my computer.

I use a USB extender cable so I do not have to get down on the ground and plug stuff into my USB ports behind my computer. Everything that I own works through this cable except the WD passport drive. (It is a 2.0 USB cable at that so that is not the issue, plus 1.0 should theoretically still work, just not at 2.0 speeds) SO.I tried to plug it directly into the USB port on the back of my computer and it worked instantly.

Other people have reported a fix after finding that their cable was loose. This USB cable that comes with the drive seems to be picky for some reason. Perhaps these are faulty cables somehow. Hopefully this will help some people. I was pounding my head against the wall over this one. I can't find any specific thread.would have been nice if they provided a link. I haven't taken a USB hard drive apart before but there should be a way to take the hard drive out of the casing and plug it into your computer internally.

It should detect it as another hard drive in your system and you should be able to access the files. That is pretty much what you would pay a data recovery place to do. How to connect it.I am not sure. I don't know what type of connection the hard drive in the USB case uses. I can only find that people 'plug it in internally' but they don't specify by which connection they do so. So it sounds like it might be fairly easy but I couldn't help you out too much since I haven't done this before. Tonight I accidentally dropped my WD passport 120Gb drive (from desk to floor).

Before doing so I did the 'safe disconnect'. Everytime I connect the WD120Gb Windows says 'USB device not recognized. One of the usb devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned and wondows does not recognise it.

For assistance in solving this problem, I click the message.' USB root hub says: Unknown device. Windows 2008, Vista, XP machines return same error. Anyone got some clues? Tried front and back USB ports to no avail. Drive spins up, the I hear a 'crink' a few seconds later.

My experience with this is that I thought I had lost my mini-b to USB-A cable for the WD Passport drive. The one I had I had bought from Radio Shack which was equivalent or better quality then the one that came with the drive.

I had to get a new one because the one that was supplied had broken. Now for the one I thought I lost, I went to best buy and bought another cable to replace it. It was not as thick and nor was it gold plated on the tips. It worked fine and was recognized by Mac OS, although when I plugged it in to my PC it would not supply enough power. Thinking that I still had lost my old cable I ran across it and plugged it back into my PC with that gold plated and much thicker Mini-B to USB-A cable. It worked fine and loaded my WD Passport.

I believe that if you have a flimsy cable with no gold plating on the tips it just may not be supplying enough power or also having trouble sending the information to your computer. Macs for some reason don't require the gold plating but for PC having it and a much thicker cable seemed to resolve my issue. It's a little more expensive to get this kind of cable but it may also be the problem you are having.

Don't hesitate to give it a try. It may save you from having to get someone to recover the data for you and spending more than $30 for a cable that could fix your problem.

Here is a possible solution to the original problem, but I don't know why it works: Plug the drive into a computer running Vista. (I know this is an XP forum, but read on.) I have a similar problem. I have a WD Passport 60 gig that I keep music and personal files on at work.

Computer is running XP Pro, version 5.1.2600. Every few weeks or longer, the drive simply disappears and cannot be accessed, even after unplugging and replugging it in. The drive light is on, and you can hear a soft rhythmic clicking, as if the drive is spinning on an endless loop. No error messages, nothing. The drive is simply not detected. Rebooting the computer does not solve the problem.

Western Digital Baab4000asl

I took the drive home to see if I could recover it. I plugged it into my Vista box there, and it started up fine. All files were there, and fully accessible. The amazing thing is, after this 'reset' through Vista, it works fine when plugged back into the XP computer at work. (At least, until the next time it craps out, which can be weeks later.) I have done this numerous times, and it always works. It's somewhat annoying, but better than not having the drive.

Note that plugging it into other XP computers (at work) does not 'reset' the drive, and you still just get the clicking sound, with no recognition by the OS. Hope this helps. More importantly, does this suggest to anyone what the underlying problem is? I'd like to be able to solve the problem for good. I have noticed that I have a few USB devices that do not work with the USB extension cable. I just got a 2GB flash drive and it doesn't get recognized either.

I compared it to another USB flash drive that I have and that works with the cable. The actual USB connection part on the 2GB flash drive is longer than what is on the other flash drive that works. So it looks like the extra length is just enough to prevent a good connection to the USB cable.

If you look closely there are two small square holes towards the end of the USB male end. The female USB connector has two pin-like prongs that are supposed to click in the holes. This is the problem.

On the longer USB male parts it prevents the prongs from clicking into those square holes. I looked at the passport and it has this longer male USB end as well. I was not aware that there are different USB male lengths but this is what is happening. I unfortunately have 3 120GB passport drives.

They work fine on the powerful Dell PC I do most of my photo work on but they have never worked on the crappy old PC I have connected to the internet (hmm. Recently I acquired a Dell laptop and thought whoopee doo! Now I can transfer stuff from the good PC to the laptop - not so because of course the laptop refused to acknowledge the drives.

The lights came on, but like they say no-one was home. I searched the internet and came across this forum. Ok I thought, try a new cable! I unwrapped and plugged in a cable that had come with my Canon camera and so far, touch wood they are working perfectly! By the way I am not sure of some of the drivers and things I downloaded from WD. I have cleared them all off now, but they were doing some weird things to my internet connection for a while.

Cheers again for the good work!