Passport death

[CrystalSkull]

I, like the rest of you, have a Passport that recently quit.  The end of it tapped the floor and that's all it took.  None of the computers I've tried it in recognizes it and the only pop-up I've received asks me if I want to reformat.  I work in the law enforcement community and our computer crimes gurus took it and tried to image it with forensic software that we use for our computer-involved investigations and that wouldn't work either.  All I can say is that when it's dead, it's dead.  Give a proper funeral with a hammer. 

[Azzek]

I have heard this a number of times...so WD is this Passport reliable or NOT?

I have seen an administrator on this site say you can damage it if you drop it 1/2 inch if this is true how can it be portable and why would I save important data to it????

PLEASE ANSWER WD !!!

[Bill_S]

@ Azzek

It's as reliable as a 5400 rpm spinning drive can be.  You just can't drop it, especially if it's running, and expect it to keep working.  You shouldn't even move an external drive once it's running, let alone drop it.  I don't even pick up my laptop and move it around when it's on, because of the wear and tear that causes a drive. 

I own one of the original WD Passports that came out about 4 years ago - the big silver one.  It still runs fine, and I've never had any issues with it, because I'm CAREFUL with how I handle it.  If you want a drive that has a greater chance of surviving being dropped, then you should look into purchasing a solid state drive.  Because no company will guarantee their spinning drives against that kind of abuse.

By the way, I was one that said that about drives being dropped 1/2 an inch.  Half an inch is just about the distance it takes to hit the max G force a drive can handle.  And, I was referring to internal drives, but I don't see why it wouldn't pertain to externals just as well.

So, if that's how you plan to handle a drive, dropping or moving it around, then maybe you don't want to use an external drive to save data to.  I guarantee you that you will be making regular trips to data recovery to retrieve the data.

@ CrystalSkull 

You should be able to retrieve the data through one of our data recovery partners and still get the drive warrantied.  That's if the data really is that important.  Also, I would recommend that you always back up any data, especially if it's going to be handled through external drives.  You found out the hard way the reason why.

[manuel0691]

help, it started with how i was able to recovery my drive last year, and i'm still trying it again.  I don't give up. I which i would have took the pen and paper and written it down.  Come on give me some Ideas, OK  Thanks!