dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

If you put it in the freezer, put it in a zip-lock bag first. While the freezer doesn't have much moisture inside it, when you pull the drive back out into the normal air, the humidity MAY cause issues. The air inside the zip-lock would be semi-dry because of the freezing and would, at least, match the air inside the drive.

Gemgirl1 Loc: Grand Rapids, MI & Shalimar, FL

I have had one fail as well less then a year old. Same with my husband less then a year old also and I just had a 1TB internal go bad that I put in my MacBook Pro 15 in. that is a mid 2010 which I keep going. I also just got a new MacBook Pro 15 in. While all of them were replaced by WD because they were under warranty it was a major hassle and the WD My Passport for MAC happened while I was at the Badlands on vacation and had taken many photos. There was still the inconveniance and it cost me $150.00 to get the data recovered plus $100.00 for a new 2tb external to put the data on. I realize that I was lucky to find ComputerRescue911 a local company that was much less expensive then any of the companies WD recommended which were all well over $1000.00. I also use LaCie and G-Technology and Seagate and so far no problems except for a LaCie Porsche Design which is not being recognized by my new MacBook Pro but it is due to the Sierra OX because it works just fine on the El Capitan OX. So if you recently upgraded to Sierra you might explore that especially if you can feel the disk turning. Good Luck.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Absolutely. This is commonly seen in data centers where drives that have run for many years refuse to restart when taken down, even for short periods of time, and I have personally experienced it on my own NetApp RAID storage. If you remember Y2K, many major storage manufacturers advised against taking down their storage for exactly this reason. In addition to the higher starting current to spin up the drive, there's also bearing sticksion, and the fact that, depending on the drive, the heads may be parked in an area of the platter where debris accumulates. This is exactly the reason I don't trust archiving my data on a disconnected HD. While I do keep mirrored copies of important data on HDs of other machines on the network for convenience, my backup/archive/DR resides on MDisks and in the cloud on AWS (Amazon Web Services S3).

WD passports and other cheap external drives (often with no cooling fans) may seem attractive from a price perspective right until the moment that the entire reason for your computer (the data) becomes unavailable and that <$100 drive turns into a $1,000 recovery operation (if that's even possible).

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

I agree totally. I spent 48 hours on Dec. 31st 1999 / New Years Day 2000 monitoring our (Hartford Insurance / Hartford Financial Services) systems around the world as Y2K approached and passed each time zone, monitoring our systems and verifying data to make sure time stamping of data and all services were working correctly. That was one of the "disadvantages" of being a senior systems engineer. LOL. The training (Hartford had their own Cisco, Novell, and Microsoft training staff and required that all engineers keep their training up to date since it was free to the employees), travel, and expense account (not to mention the pay) were great but the hours and stress were the down side.

jcarlosjr Loc: Orange County

I have had good experience dealing with WD tech support, have you called them?

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

I have had great service from WD. I have rarely had need of it, but they have been spot on when I needed them. They did replace the a card in chassis of my WD Cloud system once because it wasn't recognizing one of my SATA drives. But that was under warranty and they overnighted the card.

neco Loc: Western Colorado Mountains

This happened to me, also. I banged my passport against a coffee table and could not get it to work after that. Sent it to
DataTech Labs in Denver and got most of my stuff back for about $1000. They sent my retrieved files back on a 2TB hard drive and then helped me understand how to get the files back into the right place in my computer. I have never had a passport drive fail except this one that I forgot was
plugged into my laptop when I got up for another glass of wine and knocked it against the coffee table. $1000 is a lot to spend for a
lesson learned and I now have proper backup.

Reinaldokool Loc: San Rafael, CA

Correct. All drives will fail. Google, a few years ago, did a statistical analysis. They have hundreds of thousands of drives. I've forgotten all the details, but the mean time between failures (Expected lifetime) was about 2 years or less. They use all brands of drives but are tending toward Hitachi (New name now.) but WD and Seagate are both okay.

My answer is daily backup (I'm using Acronis, but others are also good.)

Ghery Loc: Olympia, WA

I use one for backup on one of my laptops. It appears to be dead, too. I can view the file structure, but Carbonite doesn't appear to back up to is anymore. Probably time to replace it. That sure didn't last long...

cgondolf Loc: Eugene Oregon

I have had some success on more than one external drive by removing it from it's case and using a SATA to USB connector. You will, however, void the warranty and will not get a free replacement. I have had great success recovering files with the "GetDataBack" programs. You can download a free trial to see what it can recover before you buy. You would most likely need the FAT32 version. As stated in other posts, you drive does need to spin up to be recovered.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Bottom line: all rotating media drives will eventually fail. Cheap drives, whether made by Seagate or WD, will fail (lots) sooner. You spend thousands of dollars for the equipment to create the data, then why would you entrust it to a drive that cost less than the price of a good battery for your camera?

sodapop Loc: Bel Air, MD

I had a Passport once. Never could get it to work right. Several conversations with their tech guys no help. Bought a Tosheba and it works like a charm.

John Geyer

WD PASSPORTS ARE CRAP
BUY WD BLACK AND PUT IN CASE.
FIVE YEARS WARRANTY AND THEY SEEM TO LADT MUCH LONGER

John Geyer

LAST

misterzee Loc: N'Georgia Mountains

The best program on the Mac I have ever used is "Data Rescue". "Disc Warrior" comes in close to that. If you get your data back.... systematic copies to multiple drives is the best way to data-safety.