I also do computer repair as a hobby and a service as long as it remains within my skills.The hard disk makes a clicking sound when I plug into the port. My external hard drives are all enclosures I buy in order to fit regular SATA drives in them and do not contain sensible data (or are used for backup purposes). Besides, I would never ever myself buy one of those solutions companies like Western Digital, Seagate or even Samsung or whatever want you to buy as an external hard drive. For those who might recognize that name, they probably wonder why I'm posting here since I should know the basic rules about data preservation and failure prevention. With a new, stylish design that fits in the palm of your hand, theres space to store, organize, and share all the photos, videos, music and documents that fill your life.Hello everyone. Wd My Passport 1Tb Clicking Portable Storage That Compatible with USB-C and USB-A, the My Passport for Mac drive comes equipped to connect with todays latest technology.Once the utility has found your drive, click Configure Drive. Verify desired Virtual CD setting. Click Drive to configure and select your drive. Click Accept the End User's License Agreement (EULA). When I googled, it suggested that the read and write heads got corrupted.Click Continue to disable the VCD.
![]() Wd My Passport Clicking Sound Install Hfsutils ToFrom there, I started to get scared. Then I moved on to my Windows environment. And to clear the situation up, I know the USB ports on this G4 aren't faulty, as other drives work and are mounted properly on this machine (it takes time, but they eventually show up into Disk Manager).I then tried to plug it back into a Linux environment (Xubuntu live USB drive) and install hfsutils to see if it would mount. I also unplugged the drive without properly unmounting it as I had no option to do so. The second mistake I made was not paying attention to how the disk activity LED reacted.I'm also in a situation where I think I can't do anything more by myself now, outside of doing a PCB swap between the spare drive and the malfunctioning one (with swapping U12 too, which I never did before).Before attempting to perform any risky task, I wanted to have suggestions from knowledgable people here. Here are the possibilities of failure I think could have happened :- SA was damaged because the drive might not have received enough power on the G4- The drive was old anyway and some unhappy coincidence made the USB-to-SATA bridge malfunction and made access to the SA impossible- As I don't know the previous life of the drive, it might have failed previously but I didn't get any info in that way, suggested that the drive was good until it got on my hands (but I found some burnt traces on the PCB suggesting it probably overheated some time during its life)What I did try with another similar spare drive (My Passport Ultra of 1TB) I had lying around, which can't be formatted (I/O errors):- That other drive is recognized instantly in Windows, and is showing its correct capacity, WD Drive Utilities functions aren't glitched and work as intended- I tried the same set of manipulations I did with the other drive on my old Powerbook G4 to no effect, the drive was still working (I even unplugged without unmounting twice, the second time being powering off the G4)- I even dropped that spare drive intentionally on the floor from a height of 10 centimetres while in function and it still works and is recognized properly- WDMarv recognizes it properly and commands are effective- On my old G4, it takes some time to get recognized but it does appear in Disk Manager (as empty, and is indeed unformattable)That spare drive isn't important to me and could be used for experiments on my side as I said it's unformattable (SA is in intact, but the user area is probably filled with bad sectors).So I'm now prisoner of that delicate situation where a hard drive that someone lend me to transfer data has stopped functioning correctly while in my hands. Not even turning off the LED (its button is glitched) or enabling the standby timer.- Spins up, takes time for the USB-to-SATA bridge to get recognized but it eventually gets recognized- LED never blinks fast, as it should on a good and working My Passport, it stays stationary- 60 seconds after being plugged, the disk clicks once, stops spinning and then spins again- Same thing after 60 more seconds, and it does it a third time, then it keeps spinning without doing anything- LED starts blinking, but slowly, and continues to do so until I eject the disk- In WD Drive Utilities in Windows, the Erase section reveals 5 failed attempts at unlocking it, which is wrong as the drive never had a password (also shown as 0-byte)- On a modern Mac, WD Drive Utilities does report it as a 1TB disk but yield similar glitches to the Windows version with a difference in the Erase section (no mention of failed unlock attempts)- In hddsupertools, not a single command seems to work or take effect which seems obvious if access to the SA can't be had- In WDMarv, the disk is always recognized as garbage and none of its functions do anything, the spin down and spin up commands are ineffective, the Detect button reports different and inconsistant values each timeIt looks like, from what I read on previous thread I read here, that I managed to either damage the Service Area of the drive I have no idea how, or some unhappy coincidence happened during the time I decided to plug it into my old Powerbook G4. Installing WD Drive Utilities now reveals the drives is now a "0-byte" drive!!! None of the scan options work.I don't have high hopes and am ready to get yelled at but who knows.Just reposting here to ask if any of you offering data recovery services could PM me a price or an idea of how it may cost me considering what has been agreed on this thread regarding the drive: faulty head(s) resulting in unreadable SA, platter damage uncertain (they might be still intact), no grinding or friction noises.I can provide an almost identical donor drive (same model) with no firmware/SA problems.Unrelated to this incident: I managed to partly recover data from DIY attempt of mine on a Samsung 2.5 SATA drive with head stuck on platters. Other threads suggest it's not a PCB problem, but anything is possible.Thank for your reading and your comprehension. At this point I'm even ready to give the drive to a specialist, granted I won't have to pay too much. Indexing software for macSo, to people tempted to do it, for a fun experiment on a rubbish drive yes, but never on an important or someone else's drive.Okay, posting to report the epilogue to this adventure and I have excellent and relieving news.Member pcimage took care of the disk and managed to save 97% of its data. The drive has increasingly failed (slower access, increasing grinding noises) to the point of the main partition being inaccessible. I only did it because the drive owner didn't care and was ready to "play the lottery" (quoting my words here). Pubmobile emulator macBuy a separate 2.5" internal hard drive instead and put it in a decent 2.5" SATA USB 3.0 enclosure. I consider them as rubbish and make data recovery jobs extremely difficult when something bad happens due to their awkward and proprietary design.2. Never buy Western Digital Elements or My passport drives. I did inspect some of the "bad" files but they were still playable, so I guess they got corrupted over time due to successive failures of the drive.To those reading my message who aren't aware yet of the risks of data loss, what lesson(s) can you learn?1. I hope this will serve him as a lesson (I guess not yet as the data was copied to a newer My Passport drive). I'm really happy to learn that the SA or firmware wasn't toast after all and the surface was pretty much intact.I didn't get feedback from its original owner yet (it's a DJ, so there were almost only media files) but I think he will be more than happy to find most of his data back.
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