UPDATE [26 Aug 2013]: WD is providing firmware updates for various drives exhibiting the connect/disconnect problem (thanks Boostland for pointing this out). Firmware updates for My Passport drives can be found under the WD Support pages, for Windows and Mac, respectively.Read the release notes and perform the relevant update. After installing Windows 7 32-bit, my Western Digital Passport drive is being detected, but I cannot see a drive to open it. Open properties of the drive, go to hardware tab, it will show 3 items in 'device functions'. (2.5') enclosure and now it isn't showing up in Windows 7.

So This is what we know: You were using your drive (PC running Windows Vista) and while it was running you banged it (was on the edge and then it fell onto the flat side). At that point you unplugged the USB cable and then reconnected (failing to dismount the drive).

Now you can't access the drive, but the device driver and the USB interface internally of the drive is responsive (drives power light is lighting). So the drive was spinning when you knocked it. And, you failed to dismount the drive correctly.

We don't know if the system was still in the process of writing to the drive (where you in the process of reading or writing a file off of the external drive?) If not then the cache write back is only effected which is a minor issue. Otherwise the file you were accessing is likely damaged. The big issue here is what was the drive doing, was the disk head arm parked or engaged?

From the sounds of it it appears the arm was engaged so it was somewhere on the plater/s. So the heads likely dug into the platter ripping one or more off and damaging a part of the magnetic surface of the plater (heads crashed). It doesn't take much for this to happen. OK now what - If the data is that important you'll need to send your drive in to a data recovery service so they can disassemble the drive in a clean room to try repair the drive long enough to pull your data off (replacing the damaged heads). If you have also encrypted your data you will need to give them the application and the encryption keys so the they can decrypt the data. It also turns out the HD it's self is hardware encrypted so it will only work with the logic board it is mounted to, so you can't send them just the hard drive internally alone either (need to ship the complete drive with the power adapter). The cost will be expensive and there is still a chance they can't recover the data.

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Attempting to fix this via software won't work and if you are able to get it to respond the process could make things worse. Here's a Don't forget to try out their drive simulator to see what happened to your drive. Sorry for the bad news;-{. RE: Purpleghost980 and others Here is how the system works (in general) 1) Plugging in a USB device will trigger the auto-configuration on the PC to detect the device type and ther information. In order for this part to work, the USB interface on the device must work. 2) Once the device is detected, additional information is requested about the device. Kind, size, etc.

3) If the device is a disk, then the controller card attached to the device is queried to get device specific information. Realize that by this time, the device has already begun and potentially completed its self test. 4) Assuming the controller card works as expected, the device information is sent along to the PC and the device appears to the user with its information (device type and size for example). 5) When you attempt to access the disk, the controller will then attempt to read the appropriate information from the disk. If the disk can be read, great. If not, then an error will appear much like what has been reported here.

The bottom line is that there are many possibilities that can cause the symptom of “not appearing” to the user. In regards to not hearing the device spin: The device CAN appear on the Windows machine even without spinning since the controller will acknowledge its existence to the computer. This is step 2 above and does not involve accessing the actual drive itself. Hope this helps, Dan. As i am reading I see alot of the same issues and seems like no one knows how to answer a question without going in circles, and repeating the same issue: here we go: updated against my will to windows 10 1T ext HDD WD1300 drivers and firmware upsated worked fine, until a few days agao within hours! HDD in a protected space on my desk, always 'ejected media' correctly i do notice the cable is kinked (leading to a data cable issue) makes the DING noise to recognize device also asks to safley remove HDD when i dismount shows only in Device manager does not show in my PC in Disc management it shows a RED X and drive not initialized have tried to initialize as i am upset and just want to fix this thing. Today attemp 7/30/2016 i do not hear the dive spinning.