Western Digital My Passport Beeps

Question

My Western Digital My Passport Drive () is broken, when I went to plug it in today, It made beeping sounds when connected. It makes 7 beeps, then 3, then another 3, and then it pauses for a few seconds and repeats the sequence. Something like this

Now I don't know what's wrong with it or how I can solve it. Do I open it up and connect it to my computer using an external HDD station? Do I connect it via SATA? What are my option here? It's under warranty, will WD recover my data?

Solution

This beeping is usually a bad sign, it's often caused by problems with the heads. However in some cases this could also be a sign of power starvation. Since this is a portable drive it's getting the power it needs through the USB cable. Make sure you try it with another USB cable, and on other USB ports and possibly a different PC. If that doesn't help you might need to use Professional Data Recovery services to recover the data. WD does not provide data recovery services. Have a look at the list of the WD Data Recovery Partners. Most of them usually have a discount for WD drives.

Opening the drive yourself won't help due to several reasons.

This HDD is likely to need a head transplant and this requires that you find a matching donor drive and clean room environment to open the drive without destroying the data.

Opening the HDD on your own will void the warranty. From WD's "Data Recovery":

If you utilize data recovery services, Western Digital will not void the warranty associated with the disk drive you purchased from a Western Digital reseller or distributor. To retain the warranty status of your drive, you should ensure that the service provider you use provides you with written verification, on its company letterhead, that it has performed data recovery or other services on your hard drive. In all other instances, Western Digital's warranty is void if a returned disk drive exhibits a defect attributable to misuse or tampering, improper installation, alteration or to other causes as specified in our warranty policy.

Simply opening the enclosure and connecting the drive won't help in this particular case, additionally WD My Passport drives do not have SATA interface, they just have the USB port integrated on the PCB to save space.

Another important thing you should keep in mind is that multiple attempts to access a failing drive often cause further damage the HDD and the data stored in it.

Comments

[DavidPostill]

WD external drive is not assigned a drive letter by Windows or Mac OSX and data on the drive is inaccessible