Seriously, this is not funny.

[link343]

Ok, right after I finish watching a movie, not mere 10 minutes after the fact, my portable, 1 month old WD My Passport Elite is "Dead" on me. It won't be recognized by windows. It beeps 5 times before getting the "usb connected beep" on windows. Can anyone help. I really don't want to loose my data on that drive. It would be a big lost to me. A ton of movies and music on there I really don't want to lose/re-download again. and I don't want to even think about going through WD to get it replaced.

[lordofduct]

remove it from the external case, wire it directly to your machine, and try to load it up then

run a disk check if something fails

A lot of time those external drives stop being accessible because the ATA to USB logic board burns out

If there is a full failure you can load up a Linux Live disc and there are tons of FREE recovery tools for Linux (Windows has them too, but they are mostly pay)

[link343]

Might as well try that. Thank god that WD has an advance replacement deal for RMA that they'll send me a replacement HD and then I have 30 days to send them my defective drive.

The data loss isn't that bad. I can just re-torrent what I lost! Score for Piracy!

[Lanfear]

Were you watching a movie straight from the harddrive like that?

If so.. that's not the best idea.

[fastbilly1]

Sorry Chief, dataloss is the worst.

And Lanfear, I would love to know your reasoning on this. The fact that Western Digital sells a device specifically for playing movies off of passport harddrives intrigues me to ask.

[link343]

Were you watching a movie straight from the harddrive like that?

If so.. that's not the best idea.

That wasn't the reason for the data loss. I've watched tons of movies off portable drives before. It was just a comment. I have no real idea of why the drive died. And why isn't it the best idea.