Western Digital My Passport Essential 320GB Data Recovery

We perform hard drive recovery for the Western Digital My Passport Essential 320 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBAAA3200ABK-NESN (Midnight Black). You can see our up-to-date prices on our home page.

Some Tips For My Passport Essential Data Recovery

If you need My Passport Essential data recovery here are some background tips on how best to proceed. This 320GB pocket drive is widely used because its small footprint means it can be tucked into a shirt or briefcase pocket very easily.

This power comes from the USB data cable, so only one cable is required in addition to the Essential in order to read and write data.

The most common cause of failure with external hard drives is spindle failure as a result of a drop, but beyond this, the Essential (also known as the WDBAAA3200ABK-NESN) is also prone to issues deriving from this same USB power source.

The specification for USB power feeds is quite exact, but that does not mean it is deployed correctly by all computer manufacturers and assemblers. A substandard USB power supply can lead to unexpected behaviour of the motor controlling the read-head stack.

For example, if the power has a glitch at the same moment as the heads are parked (a frequent occurrence), then the heads can collide with the edge of the ramp and deform. This can be overcome with parts substitution, but requires a top-end data recovery company.

Issues Specific to Western Digital WDBAAA3200ABK-NESN

There are no data recovery issues unique to the Western Digital WDBAAA3200ABK-NESN, but check below for problems specific to Western Digital and issues that can appear on all drives with moving parts. Users rated this hard drive at 2.5 stars out of 5.

Typical Western Digital Hard Drive Problems

Western Digital manufacture a vast volume of hard drives, which are typically extremely reliable. You should note that all hard drives will fail at some point, whether by wear and tear, mishandling, or some systematic problem due to unique or family-wide errors in thefirmware or hard drive assembly.

Western Digital drives generally fail due to issues common to all external hard drives and hard drives:

Issues Common to All External Hard Drives

External harddrives with platters often have one or more of the following special issues:

• internal damage while being moved
• internal damage due to being knocked
• internal damage due to being dropped
• overheating due to inadequate ventilation
• electrical damage within the enclosure PCB

Issues Common to All Hard Drives

All hard drives with platters are prone to the following problems:

• damaged read-heads
• weakly magnetised or bad sectors
• platter-scraping
• spindle-motor failure
• PCB electrical damage
• firmware damage
• component failure from overheating

How to Solve Most Common WD Problem

In recent years, we’ve seen a major increase in Western Digital hard drives having “slow response” and “pending” issues. Here at HDD Recovery Services, we’ve seen the most problems come from MyBook and My Passport drives. Sometimes, this can be a complex issue to work through as the drive shows no distinct symptoms of failure. Recovering data successfully requires a full understanding of how these drives work.

Due to the influx of issues, we’ve worked through the recovery process for these issues with a fine tooth comb. After working on thousands of these drives, our streamlined process gives our customers a reliable, safe and more complete data recovery results. Dealing with a WD Passport data recovery projects that involve “no response” issues means you have to take careful steps in order to verify the data in a clear and concise manner without damaging the integrity of the data. We’ve learned what does and doesn’t work in this situation. Our procedure is the best possible way to recover your data from pending and no response problems.

To help you get through this, we’ve created a demonstration video to showcase our process. We’re going to show you how we gain access to trapped data on a Western Digital Passport drive that uses a WD proprietary USB 3.0 interface. This applies to drives that aren’t recognized by your computer when you connect them. Western Digital drives are extremely popular and come in often with a wide variety of issues, not just this one. However, some issues tend to be unique to WD hard drives.

Our video is based off of one of our most recent cases. The user’s drive seemed to stop working with no real reason. He always took proper care of this Passport drive. It was never knocked off his desk, dropped, bumped or any initiated in any other type of physical damage. The drive worked perfectly one day, but the next day the drive wasn’t recognized at all. The drive sounded like it was working and went through all the usual steps during power up process such as:

• Initial spinning
• Calibration
• Idling
• No spinning down/li>
• No strange clicking or beeping sounds

Attempting Mybook or Passport Data Recovery by Yourself?

if you hear clicking from your hard drive, stop using it immediately. This means the drive requires a head replacement. Unlike the “no response” issue, this is not a safe DIY task. You need the proper equipment and a clean room to do this. Attempting to continue using the drive or repair it could cause permanent damage to your drive and prevent data recovery. Contact us as quickly as possible for your best chance at recovering your data.

Follow along with our video to see how we deal with problematic WD Passport drives. If you have the right equipment and tools, you can duplicate the steps to fix your drive on your own. If you don’t contact HDD Recovery Services and can work on the drive for you.

We wanted to create this video to replicate what you might have experienced at home. We want to show you how you can diagnose the drive and try to repair it. Our first step was to connect the drive to our computer to see if Windows is able to recognize it. We waited for several minutes but it was still not showing up. Since trying different “data recovery software” seems to be one of the most common things attempted in case of a proble with the hard drive, we’ve decided to try and see what the response of R-Studio is going to be like in such situation. Please note that you can download R-Studio here yourself to try for yourself at home.

Even though it did show up in R-Studio, we couldn’t do anything with the drive. All of the software’s options were grayed out, meaning nothing could be done.

What Makes WD Passport Data Recovery Special?

Western Digital Passport drives aren’t the same as a normal 2.5” laptop drive, which makes them slightly more difficult to fix. Unlike most 2.5” drives, WD uses hardware encryption combined with a proprietary USB 3.0 interface. At least, this is what they use on some of their devices.

The WD Passport Ultra in the video is one such example, It is encrypted as part of the USB bridge complex by the INITIO component. Encryption occurs during the delivery of data along the USB bride. Whenever the bridge is damaged or disabled, you can still access the data on the drive, but it’s encrypted. This makes the data useless until you have a way to decrypt it.

"The information provided is for educational purpose only. Use the information as per the requirement. We are not responsible for any actions that is taken Western Digital for your media."