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I have WD Passport external HDD and yesterday, when I was transferring some photos to it, the transfer suddenly stopped. I thought nothing of it, retried a few times - nothing. So I restarted my PC and after that, the drive didn't work anymore. When you connect it to a PC, the white LED keeps blinking all the time and for a minute or so, the disk makes an intermittent clicking noise. After that, it becomes pretty silent or makes its regular, pretty quiet shuffling sound (though the LED keeps blinking all the time).

When you plug it in, the PC does recognize it in some way, though, because you can hear the sound of a new USB device being connected and see it listed as a USB device (WD Hard Drive) in the system tray. It's not visible in the explorer, though, and recovery software like Kroll OnTrack does see it as some "unrecognized drive" but can't start recovery because neither its Scan or Deep Scan features find any partitions. I've also tried the Disk Management tool that's built into Windows but it only shows it as an unrecognized drive, asking whether I want to initialize it because it claims it's not yet initialized.

What else may I try? I'd really like to get the files out of it because these are basically all my photos and videos from the past years :( Having it restored by professionals, on the other hand, would be madly expensive. I've tried different USB ports, different machines (desktop PC, laptop, Mac laptop) but all to no avail. Is there anything else you'd recommend?

Extra info:
That's how HDD connector looks like:

enter image description here

Alex
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Straightfw
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    General rule: Clicking drive == broken dive. Replace the drive & recover from your backup. – Tetsujin Aug 12 '18 at 18:35
  • @Tetsujin - yeah, thing is, I don't have the backup of all the data there. Some, sure, but there's also a lot of that I do not have a backup of :( And I would like to try everything that has even a slight chance of success before coming to terms with the fact that it's irreversibly (or "irreversibly if I don't want to mortgage my house to pay for it") lost. – Straightfw Aug 12 '18 at 18:46
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    What moab said. Reason for this can be failing power. I've had it happen countless of times. HDD doesn't get enough power to properly spin => clicking noise from re-tries. If it happens on all machines, direct motherboard ports, Y-cable and powered USB hub - It's most likely the enclosure. (Or the HDD itself, but let's hope it's not that) – confetti Aug 12 '18 at 20:08
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    If you didn't deal with low level hdd tools that require good understanding of hardware, then better send it to recovery company, it not so "madly expensive" to compare to digital assets you may loose, if you find a local guys who knows how to do it (you need a good references that they really can do that) it might be a couple of hundred bucks, 300dollardatarecovery.com can do it for three hundred. – Alex Aug 12 '18 at 20:27
  • @Moab thank you but could you help me with what kind of cable I should use? I removed the enclosure, thinking I'd be able to simply connect the drive to a SATA cable and to my desktop's MOBO like a regular drive, but there are only these three ports: https://imgur.com/a/yQAx7ew . The middle one is the one which I've been using until now (and the only accessible from outside the enclosure) with the included USB cable. It's nothing like a regular USB cable, though. How may I connect something like this to my MoBo? – Straightfw Aug 12 '18 at 21:25
  • Also @confetti but I couldn't tag you in the comment above because of the limit of one person to tag per comment – Straightfw Aug 12 '18 at 21:26
  • @Straightfw That picture of the drive is... odd. Can you check if that isn't actually just an adapter stuck onto the regular SATA pins? – Michael Frank Aug 12 '18 at 22:08
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    https://superuser.com/q/337222/10165 and the selected answer is worth a look. Those drives don't have sata pins exposed and direct connection to your motherboard will involve working out there the sata test points are, and soldering wires to them. Very non trivial – Journeyman Geek Aug 12 '18 at 23:36
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    @Moab It isn't proprietary connection, it is standard USB3 micro B connector. Many nowadays external drives embedding sata2usb adapter on a hard drive's motherboard. The issue is clicking sound, it isn't related to usb2sata adapter, but telling about internal issue of hard drive itself. Mostly it is broken sectors in the beginning of hard drive. To fix such things one need to know how to talk to hard drive directly, understanding low level signaling DRDY,DRQ,DRSC,WRFT... use tools like PC3000... If it is one time project, it doesn't deserve effort to learn all of this stuff – Alex Aug 13 '18 at 07:49
  • Oh, it's a WD passport.... I've had the same issue almost ten years ago, WD passport too. Mine had the same kind of connector when dissembled (usb 2.0 though). I gave up on mine. – confetti Aug 13 '18 at 08:01
  • @MichaelFrank - regretfully this isn't simply an adapter stuck on the pins :( – Straightfw Aug 13 '18 at 18:16
  • @JourneymanGeek - oh shoot, yeah, this doesn't look trivial. So is there any other way of connecting the drive that I may try, if I don't want to go the soldering route? – Straightfw Aug 13 '18 at 18:18
  • @Alex - oh, I see. So isn't there anything else I may try, apart from taking it to a professional, that has at least a slight chance of success? :( – Straightfw Aug 13 '18 at 18:19
  • @Alex good to know about the connector, I have harvested many "clicking" hard drives from enclosures, once removed the function perfectly, currently have 3 of them for storage drives. – Moab Aug 13 '18 at 18:19
  • @Moab - did yours also have this kind of connector when removed from their enclosures? – Straightfw Aug 13 '18 at 18:20
  • @Straightfw No they were standard sata connectors, haven't had one apart that looks like yours yet, see my answer below. – Moab Aug 13 '18 at 18:30
  • @Moab Yes, that's true, if enclosure has separate usb2sata adapter inside, sometimes removing them and connecting directly via SATA would resolve an issue. In OP case the only solution is to try soldering skills from link suggested by Journeyman Geek, it might still be a case that an issue is with usb2sata converter, but in my experience it is very rare case when it applies to adapters that lives on hdd's motherboard. – Alex Aug 13 '18 at 19:21
  • Define 'madly expensive' because this likely isn't going to cost 1000's of Dollars when sent to a data recovery specialist. I doubt clicking will disappear by converting to SATA because it's unlikely this is caused by the PCB. Clicking is mostly head/media degradation related. – Joep van Steen Nov 03 '22 at 11:22

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That is a standard USB 3.0 Micro B connector, you can buy a usb cable and connect it to the drive then to any PC usb port. Try a different cable.

If you get the same clicking noise from the drive after trying a second cable, then is is time for professional recovery.

enter image description here

enter image description here

Moab
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  • Yeah, of course I do have a cable like that - it came with it when I bought it and it's the one I've been using for the few years that I've been using this HDD. Can this be a cable fault, then, and should I try to buy a new cable first? – Straightfw Aug 13 '18 at 18:36
  • So you tried the cable after removing the drive? and it did the same thing (clicking)?, Yes that is your last resort is to try another cable. – Moab Aug 13 '18 at 19:03
  • Yep, I've tried the cable (althought the one I've always used) without the enclosure and there wasn't any difference - clicking for a minute or two, then quiet shuffling sound similar to the one it always made. OK, I'll try to find and buy a new cable and see if that helps (though regretfully I'm a bit skeptical ;( ), thanks. – Straightfw Aug 13 '18 at 20:32