WD Green Passport USB drive (WD15NWVW) not being detected in Spinrite

[robbo007]

Hi guys,
I'm trying to repair a WD passport USB drive. The drive is detected by the bios as it give me the option to try and boot from it but when I boot Spinrite off a USB pen drive it only shows one drive, the internal SSD drive in the laptop.

Any ideas?
Regards,

 

[PHolder]

SpinRite 6.1 only directly supports PATA and SATA devices it has direct drivers built in for. Everything else it relies on the BIOS for. If it's not visible when you boot off the USB to get into FreeDOS (the OS SpinRite runs under) then it's likely your BIOS only shows it when it was the boot device.

 

[robbo007]

So if its visible by the BIOS, meaning the bios can use the drive and boot off it why can't Spinrite 6.1 see it? Is there no way to load some sort of generic USB driver before loading Spinrite so it has access to it? Excuse my ignorance.

 

[ColbyBouma]

Do you have any other computers you can try using? BIOS behavior varies wildly between different brands and models.

No, there is no USB driver you can load. All of SpinRite's drivers are built-in.

 

[robbo007]

Not at present. Ive had to borrow this laptop from a neigbour. I've only got macs and loads of old retro equipment. LOL I'm going to have to hunt down another laptop and see.

 

[miquelfire]

How old is the retro equipment? One of those might be good enough.

 

[peterblaise]

@robbo007 wrote "... Hi guys, I'm trying to repair a WD passport USB drive. The drive is detected by the bios as it give me the option to try and boot from it but when I boot Spinrite off a USB pen drive it only shows one drive, the internal SSD drive in the laptop. Any ideas? Regards, ..."​

- - - - -

Try OTHER USB drives:
- can the SpinRite boot USB drive 'see' any other USB flash drive you might plug into ANY USB socket?

Try OTHER USB sockets:
- can the computer boot from the SpinRite USB drive in ANY OTHER USB socket, and then see the WD USB drive in ANY OTHER USB socket?

Try OTHER BOOT METHOD:
- can you build an IDE/ATA/AHCI drive as a USB drive, put SpinRite on it via USB, then move the drive itself internally to boot internally, and then can THAT SpinRite boot 'see' any USB flash drive to test, including the WD USB drive?

Try OTHER PROGRAMS:
- is the internal boot drive Windows? If so can you run Steve Gibson's free ValiDrive https://www.grc.com/validrive.htm to test the USB drive? A mini-test, but a test nevertheless.

.

 

[robbo007]

OK thanks for that.

I've found a P4 Dell Optixplex GX280 and booted off a CDROM with Spinrite. I get a bios 81 drive not accessible error. Still no way to get to the WD USB drive.

The drive mounted under a Windows PC after scanning all night with Validate and comes up in green.

The main problem is when reading the drive there must be an issue and I can hear the drive retrying and retrying (click click) when the file system is mounted. This makes it impossible to copy the data off. Hence why I thought Spinrite would do the trick.

 

[robbo007]

So if I insert a pendrive on the same P4 Dell Spinrite detects this. So its either the WD disk is not compatible with Spinrite or there is something stopping it from being detected. Would be good to have a re-scan drivers option in the spinrite menu also.

 

[PHolder]

I guess you need to understand that BIOS/FreeDOS/Legacy OSes didn't come with any USB support. Some support was kinda "hacked" into it for BOOTing... so you can see the device you might boot off of, but no other drive. In essence what is missing is the ability for FreeDOS to "scan" the USB device tree and make those devices usable in FreeDOS. There are some BIOSes that do this better than others. If you have one of those BIOSes you would definitely need the drive connected and powered up while FreeDOS boots. It can also matter WHICH USB port you connect to, as not all of them are equivalent, so try moving things around. (Still no promise your BIOS will support it, but trial and error appears to be all we have to work with.)