Western Digital Passport 120GB problems, help needed

firedragon_jing · 11-19-2008, 11:16 PM

Ok, so I have a WD passport USB hard drive, not my favorite or what I would pick, got it as a present otherwise I would have gone with Seagate.

As for my problem, it had been working fine for the past couple years, only had some freezing issues that could be solved by unhooking the USB and plugging back in, did this most for movies. Well just the other day, it stopped allowing me to write to the drive, giving me the error "drive cannot find the sector requested." I could still copy the data off and I did that and copied the data to a hard drive I checked out to my school.

Well I tried to fix it in the time I had the extra hdd, but nothing worked. I've tried with the single usb cord it came with and a dual usb connecting cord. I've also tried on seperate computers. The diagnostic software I used from WD and Seagate both said the drive passed diagnostic without bad sectors, which is the most confusing part. I can't format the hard drive, every time I try through rightclick/format, cmd, or disk management it will go through the format and say it could not complete it. Only once did disk management, create a new partition work, but after installing 48GB of data, it went back to giving me "drive cannot find the sector requested." I am now having to burn the data to 22 DVDs to save my data. Is there any hope in salvaging my hard drive, a third party software that might help?

polishpaul · 12-07-2008, 05:14 AM

OK, first, it may just be easier to buy (find) a 2nd hard drive and copy the data.. 22 DVD's seems like a lot!

It sounds like its having hardware or file system problems.

Please go to the event viewer and look for NTFS errors or anything related to this disk issue. Click the little copy button below the arrows (while looking at the event) and paste it here.

Also please run:
chkdsk x:
And replace x with whatever drive letter the USB drive is.

Paste the results for us to see.

**raptor_pa** · 12-07-2008, 07:53 AM

Sounds like a translator error or bad servo track info on the drive. Neither one of which will be fixed at home. Backup your data and return the drive to WD if under warantee or replace the drive.

11-19-2008, 11:16 PM	#1 (permalink)
firedragon_jing Registered User Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 2 OS: Windows XP sp3	Western Digital Passport 120GB problems, help needed Ok, so I have a WD passport USB hard drive, not my favorite or what I would pick, got it as a present otherwise I would have gone with Seagate. As for my problem, it had been working fine for the past couple years, only had some freezing issues that could be solved by unhooking the USB and plugging back in, did this most for movies. Well just the other day, it stopped allowing me to write to the drive, giving me the error "drive cannot find the sector requested." I could still copy the data off and I did that and copied the data to a hard drive I checked out to my school. Well I tried to fix it in the time I had the extra hdd, but nothing worked. I've tried with the single usb cord it came with and a dual usb connecting cord. I've also tried on seperate computers. The diagnostic software I used from WD and Seagate both said the drive passed diagnostic without bad sectors, which is the most confusing part. I can't format the hard drive, every time I try through rightclick/format, cmd, or disk management it will go through the format and say it could not complete it. Only once did disk management, create a new partition work, but after installing 48GB of data, it went back to giving me "drive cannot find the sector requested." I am now having to burn the data to 22 DVDs to save my data. Is there any hope in salvaging my hard drive, a third party software that might help?

12-07-2008, 05:14 AM	#2 (permalink)
polishpaul Registered User Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Warsaw, Poland / Newark, DE USA Posts: 152 OS: WIN: XP, XP64, Vista64, Server 2003, Server 2008, 95 (for old games). Linux: vaious flavors	Re: Western Digital Passport 120GB problems, help needed OK, first, it may just be easier to buy (find) a 2nd hard drive and copy the data.. 22 DVD's seems like a lot! It sounds like its having hardware or file system problems. Please go to the event viewer and look for NTFS errors or anything related to this disk issue. Click the little copy button below the arrows (while looking at the event) and paste it here. Also please run: chkdsk x: And replace x with whatever drive letter the USB drive is. Paste the results for us to see. Last edited by polishpaul; 12-07-2008 at 05:16 AM.

12-07-2008, 07:53 AM	#3 (permalink)
raptor_pa Mod Hardware Team Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Central PA Posts: 4,769 OS: XP	Re: Western Digital Passport 120GB problems, help needed Sounds like a translator error or bad servo track info on the drive. Neither one of which will be fixed at home. Backup your data and return the drive to WD if under warantee or replace the drive.