Western Digital’s My Passport is one of the most common portable drives we see. Most models have hardware encryption built in, and the USB connector is part of the drive’s own circuit board. That means some quick fixes you might read about online can make recovery harder. We recover them in-house, including encrypted drives.
What we recover
- My Passport and My Passport Ultra hard drives
- My Passport for Mac and My Passport Ultra for Mac
- My Passport Go and My Passport SSD
- My Passport Wireless and Wireless Pro
- Older ranges such as My Passport Essential, Slim and Studio
Common faults
- Drive clicking or beeping after a drop
- Not recognised, or shows as unallocated or “WD SES Device”
- USB socket loose or snapped off the board
- Password forgotten, or the WD Security unlock no longer works
- Files missing after unplugging without ejecting
What to do now
Disconnect the drive and keep it somewhere safe. Don’t format or initialise it in Disk Management or Disk Utility. Don’t remove the disk from its case and connect it to a computer directly, because on encrypted models the data can only be read with the original board. Don’t run recovery software either.
How it works
- Free evaluation
- Fixed quote before we start
- Recovery once you approve
- Your files returned on a new drive
Our Western Digital page, WD data recovery and hard drive recovery pages have more information.
FAQs
I’ve forgotten my My Passport password. Can you get around it?
No. The encryption is designed so it can’t be bypassed. If you remember the password, we can recover data from a faulty drive.
Is my My Passport encrypted even if I never set a password?
Many models encrypt everything by default. That’s why the original circuit board must stay with the drive.
Can you recover a My Passport SSD?
Yes. Those are flash-based, so the faults differ. See SSD data recovery.