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I have a WD Passport USB drive.

It works fine in my laptop, except for one port. I plug it in, the light comes on on the drive, but nothing in Explorer or Disk Management.

It even works when I plug it into a hub, but not on one port!?

I'd rather not plug it into the hub, as it's probably pushing too much of a power requirement through the hub and it probably makes the drive I/O slower.

Any ideas how I can get that port to work?

FYI: The same port works fine with other USB devices and drives! It's just taken a disliking to this one and I can't persuade it otherwise!

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  • most probably the USB port cannot supply enough power to your device as USB ports have (generally) a serial connection that they share the power. Why it does not work on that specific port? we need to see the hardware layout and how the power is allocated between the USB ports. why it works for the other USB devices? because most probably they don't require more power than your USB port provide
    – Angs
    Jul 17, 2013 at 19:03
  • This one port, is it USB 3.0 or USB 2.0? Jul 17, 2013 at 19:12
  • as far as I know, USB 2.0. But it could be 3! It's actually got a slightly different icon above it. USB icon with a power icon!
    – SteveCl
    Jul 17, 2013 at 19:26

1 Answer 1

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You might not be able to make this particular port work on that device. It might actually be incompatible with the disk device.

Sometimes devices are manufactured based on broad range specifications and others are more narrow. Your port might meet the standard USB broadrange for service whereas the device requires a more narrow range of operation.

I'd not worry about it as most likely another USB device will work just fine in that port.

Interesting I've had this problem on other things like USB hubs as well.

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  • You'd think though that all USB ports on the same laptop would follow the same standard. This drives works in all other computers/laptops that I have.
    – SteveCl
    Jul 17, 2013 at 19:08
  • I have noticed this problem in even the laptop that I have now. One USB port will not accept a certain headset but the other will. But yet that port does fine on with other hardware. Complain to the people hardware designers on following a consistent spec.
    – mdpc
    Jul 17, 2013 at 19:11

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