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I have a wd passport. Every month or so; I backup the contents of all my PCs i.e. PC; tablet and laptop. There is a lot of stuff I don't want to lose e.g. correspondence letters; software development learning projects etc. My PC is problematic at the moment e.g. on Sunday; it showed the blue screen of death three times, but recovered each time.

Therefore I wanted to do an extra backup this week, however I am seeing errors when I plug in my mass storage device to any of my machines:

  1. The parameter is incorrect
  2. Sometimes it lets me browse files, but usually it will not allow me to open files.
  3. Please reformat! Only started seeing this after I plugged the USB drive into my Mac to test.
  4. error 0x800701E3

I am thinking about buying a USB 3 cable, however they are quite expensive. Could this be a cable issue? Shall I just bite the bullet and buy a new mass storage device? Will a reformat work?

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  • Have you tested the device with a USB 2 cable?
    – grawity_u1686
    Commented Oct 28, 2020 at 19:44
  • @user1686, the usb 3 cable came with the device and have had no problems before. Why do you ask?
    – w0051977
    Commented Oct 28, 2020 at 19:48
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    I would consider replacing the passport.
    – Moab
    Commented Oct 28, 2020 at 19:52
  • @w0051977: Because you're having problems now. (And because you already suspect it, as you mentioned that you plan on buying a new one.) Cables and USB ports don't last forever and it's an easy way to rule out the possibility.
    – grawity_u1686
    Commented Oct 28, 2020 at 20:03
  • The reason you were asked to format is because, Macs don’t use the same file system as Windows, so that’s not something to worry about.
    – Valay_17
    Commented Oct 29, 2020 at 3:30

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Could be a cable but let's check the disk first. Click on the Start button, type cmd, right-click the Command Prompt app, and choose Run as administrator to open an elevated Command Prompt.

Once at the command prompt type chkdsk "your drive letter": /f command and press Enter to find and fix disk errors. Replace "your drive letter" with the drive that the passport is.

If "your drive letter" is D then the command will be chkdsk D: /f

If you need to check bad sectors on the external hard drive, you can type chkdsk "your drive letter": /r command and press Enter. Replace "your drive letter" with the drive that the passport is.

If "your drive letter" is D then the command will be chkdsk D: /r

Hope this helps.

Also WD has a utility Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics or WD Drive Utilities for the passport that could help here is the link:

https://support-en.wd.com/app/products/product-detail/p/250#WD_downloads

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  • 1
    Not sure why this answer was downvoted. I have already tried everything suggested, but I still agree with the suggested..
    – w0051977
    Commented Oct 28, 2020 at 20:21

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