500gb WD My Passport suddenly not recognized, won't reformat,says 2TB in Disk Utility

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Hello!

I recently purchased a 500gb Western Digital My Passport Elite external hard drive for my MacBook Pro. Since I run both Windows and Mac OS Version 10.4.11 on my MBP I wanted the drive to be readable and writable for both operating systems. When I connected the drive for the first time in the Mac OS it was recognized in the Finder but was not writable. So I followed the advice of a few forums and opened the Disk Utility and reformatted the drive for "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". Things appeared to run smoothly, and I even copied about 10gb from my old external onto the My Passport. I did not use the drive until a few days later when I connected again running in Mac OS, but this time an error message popped up: "The disk you inserted was not able to be read by this computer." The drive did not appear in My Computer when I switched to Windows. Switching back to Mac OS and opening the Disk Utility I figured I may as well try again to reformat the drive again, this time receiving the error: "Disk Erase failed with the error: Input/output error". I tried formatting with each volume format from the drop-down and got the same error. I then tried partitioning the drive (with 1 partition) and clicking on "GUID Partition Table" in the Opitions dialogue box and received this error: "Partition failed with the error: Input/output error."

It should also be noted that when I first connect the drive it makes about 6 clicking sounds as it is trying to boot and then sounds like it turns off when the "The disk you inserted was not able to be read by this computer" comes up. ALSO... which is really strange... the drive comes up as "2.0 TB WD My Passport" in the Disk Utility. I don't understand why this is as it is a 500gb drive. I do remember seeing it as a 500gb drive when I opened the Disk Utility the first time I successfully reformatted the drive.

What is going on!? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Jennifer

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Sound like the drive has basically called it a day.

Clicking noises from hard drives are never good and the IO errors you are seeing confirm that.

You say you purchased it recently so if you still have the receipt take it back to the store to get a replacement.
 
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Yeah it didn't make clicking sounds when I first connected it. It sounds like it's having trouble trying to start up and then just gives up.

I purchased it online and received it about a week ago. It says it has a 6 month warranty. I have contacted WD and am waiting for a response to see what they think the problem is. I figured if it was something stupid I did on my end when reformatting I would see if I could correct it myself. Thanks for your input!
 

chscag

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That drive should be warranted for more than 6 months. It should have the standard WD warranty of at least 3 years. And yes, I agree with the other post, your drive is dead. WD should send you an RMA to replace the drive.

When you receive the new drive it too will probably be formatted to NTFS which means you can't write to it from OS X. Instead of formatting it to HFS Extended Journaled, format it to MS DOS FAT-32. That will make it useable on both systems without having to install drivers.

Regards.
 
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That drive should be warranted for more than 6 months. It should have the standard WD warranty of at least 3 years. And yes, I agree with the other post, your drive is dead. WD should send you an RMA to replace the drive.

When you receive the new drive it too will probably be formatted to NTFS which means you can't write to it from OS X. Instead of formatting it to HFS Extended Journaled, format it to MS DOS FAT-32. That will make it useable on both systems without having to install drivers.

Regards.

Thanks for the advice. I will contact WD and hopefully get it replaced. I will also format it correctly next time. ;D
 
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Just a bit of an update: After giving me instructions on how to reformat my drive and me explaining again that it won't let me reformat, WD has given me an RMA # to replace the drive. They also said this, "After verifying the picture yet again we see that the drive is displaying the wrong amount of space. Which means that the firmware of the drive may be damaged. Since this is the case then unfortunately the only option is to replace your unit."

Thanks for all your help!
 
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Having exactly the same problem.

I constantly transfer files between my home Mac and work PC. It was all fine before I installed the OS X 10.6.5 update. Now the HDD doesn't get recognised and I get the same error message as Jennifer above. It works completely fine on the work PC, it just won't get recognised on the Mac.

Any suggestions on how to resolve this?

Thanks in advance!
 

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