WD Passport Problem

English Hardware
#1

http://i31.tinypic.com/2pzbdxw.jpg

I got this WD Passport 160GB portable drive, used to work very well in the past, on both windows and openSUSE.

Recently, there was some problem, when I plug it in, KDE starts opening and closing the drive very fast.
Device icon in dolphin shows up and the next second it’s gone.
There is a clicking sound from the device, every 2 sec or so.

Sometimes it opens up normally and I can see all the files but most of the time it just clicks and I have to disconnect it.

Same thing happens on windows, after I used the WD application to format the drive with a default partition image they provide on the site, it looked like it was fixed.
After a few days it started malfunctioning like that all over again.

I have a feeling this may be caused by rebooting the machine while the drive was still plugged in.

Is there anything I can do to fix it?

#2

If it is under warantee, I would try to exchange it. The fact that it appears on two OS suggests to me there could be some hardware aspect contributing to this.

I on occasion (though not often) have forgotten to unmount an external drive when switching OFF the PC, and I have never observed that behaviour.

#3

finders adjusted his/her AFDB on Wednesday 05 Aug 2009 13:56 to write:

>
> [image: http://i31.tinypic.com/2pzbdxw.jpg]
>
> I got this WD Passport 160GB portable drive, used to work very well in
> the past, on both windows and openSUSE.
>
> Recently, there was some problem, when I plug it in, KDE starts opening
> and closing the drive very fast.
> Device icon in dolphin shows up and the next second it’s gone.
> There is a clicking sound from the device, every 2 sec or so.
>
> Sometimes it opens up normally and I can see all the files but most of
> the time it just clicks and I have to disconnect it.
>
> Same thing happens on windows, after I used the WD application to
> format the drive with a default partition image they provide on the
> site, it looked like it was fixed.
> After a few days it started malfunctioning like that all over again.
>
> I have a feeling this may be caused by rebooting the machine while the
> drive was still plugged in.
>
> Is there anything I can do to fix it?
>
>

Have you used the WD manufacturer drive testing apps?

This sounds very much like a dead or dying drive to me.

You will have to run them from windows or d/load the UBCD:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Use that, it has a couple of good disk testers on there and they “should”
work on USB drives, the disk has picked up my external ones.

You might find that the disk is going and the checkers should print out an
error number that can be used to return to manufacturer.

HTH

Mark
Caveat emptor
Nullus in verba
Nil illegitimi carborundum

#4

Yes, no problems detected. Mount/umount works fine at the moment, just tried this, also done fsck.vfat.
Will try to format it again since there’s no important data on the drive.
Problem only shows up when I plug the disk, if it manages to mount normally, it works fine.