WD My Passport Clicking + 0x800701B1 Error Fix

You plug in the drive, hear click-click-click, and Windows throws 0x800701B1 at you — yeah, that's a kick in the teeth.

Here's the fix path that actually works, in order.

Step 1: Stop. Unplug it. Don't plug it back in yet.

Clicking plus a Windows error is a fork in the road. Either the drive has lost power and the heads are parking over and over, or the platters are shot. Plugging it back in ten times to "see if it works now" eats whatever data is still readable. Unplug it. Now.

Step 2: Rule out power. This is the big one.

Most 2.5" WD My Passport drives pull 700–900mA at spin-up. A front-panel USB port on a cheap desktop case, or a bus-powered hub, can't always deliver that. The drive browns out mid-spin, the heads re-park, you get the click.

Plug the drive directly into a rear USB port on the motherboard. Rear I/O, not front panel.
If it's a laptop, try a different USB port. Some laptops only fully power USB-A ports when on AC.
Swap the USB cable. The micro-B connector on WD My Passports is notoriously flaky after a year of use. A failing cable causes the same brownout symptom.
If you've got a powered USB hub, use it. Bus-powered hubs are useless here.

If the clicking stops and the drive mounts — good. Move your data off immediately. That drive just told you it's on borrowed time.

Step 3: Check Disk Management, not File Explorer

If it's still silent-clicking but Windows sees something, you'll know the drive electronics are alive and only the partition table or filesystem is unhappy.

diskmgmt.msc

Look for a disk with the correct size but no drive letter. If you see that:

Right-click the partition → Change Drive Letter and Paths → Add.
Assign something like E:.
Open it. If it asks to format — do not format. Stop and go to step 5.

0x800701B1 literally means "A device which does not exist was specified" — Windows lost the block device mid-operation. That's why you sometimes see the partition, sometimes don't. The OS thinks the disk vanished because USB enumeration dropped it.

Step 4: Test the enclosure with a known-good drive

Open the WD My Passport case. Yes, it voids the warranty, but a 2-year-old drive is out of warranty anyway. Inside you'll find either:

A standard 2.5" SATA drive (WD Blue, WD10SPZX, WD20SPZX are common)
A USB bridge board soldered to the SATA connector — WD did this on newer models

If it's a plain SATA drive, drop it into a cheap USB 3.0 SATA dock or a desktop SATA port. If the drive mounts clean, the enclosure bridge died. Replace the enclosure, keep the drive.

If it's soldered and the drive still clicks on a known-good power source, you're past DIY territory.

The clicking noise is the read/write head slamming into the park ramp because it can't find servo tracks. That's mechanical, and no software on Earth fixes it.

Step 5: If it's mechanical, stop and call a pro

If the drive clicks on a known-good cable, known-good port, and known-good power source — and doesn't show in Disk Management at all — the heads or platters are toast. Drives like the WD20SPZX use helium-sealed housings on some revisions. You cannot open these in a house and expect to recover anything. Every second it's powered, the heads scrape more magnetic material off the platters.

Data recovery on a single 2TB My Passport runs $500–$1,500 depending on the lab. If the data matters, unplug it and call DriveSavers or a local cleanroom lab. If it doesn't, buy a new drive and move on. Do not try the freezer trick. It was barely valid in 2005 and it's a great way to introduce condensation onto the platters.

Why this order works

Because 0x800701B1 with clicking is almost never the platters. It's the drive losing USB power or losing the USB link mid-enumeration. Every time someone skips straight to "the drive is dead, time for recovery," they burn $800 on a drive that a $6 USB cable would've fixed. Power and cable first, always.

Less common variations

Drive spins up fine but disappears after 30 seconds

That's USB selective suspend. Windows cuts power to idle USB devices and the WD bridge doesn't re-enumerate cleanly.

Control Panel → Power Options → Change plan settings → Change advanced power settings → USB settings → USB selective suspend → Disabled

Also go into Device Manager, expand USB controllers, and for each USB Root Hub → Properties → Power Management → uncheck "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power."

Shows as "WD My Passport 2626" with no drive letter and 0 bytes

That's the USB bridge talking but the SATA link to the drive failing. Almost always the little SATA connector inside the enclosure has worked loose. Open it, reseat the drive on the bridge, close it back up. Takes five minutes.

Works on one PC, not another

Old USB 2.0-only ports can't supply enough current. If the working PC has USB 3.0 (blue port) and the failing one has a black port, that's your answer. Get a Y-cable that pulls power from two USB ports, or a powered hub.

Clicking only when reading large files

Bad sectors. Run:

chkdsk E: /r /x

It'll take hours on a 2TB drive. If it can't complete, the drive is on its way out. Copy data off in small batches, most-important-files-first.

Prevention

Eject properly. Every time. The write cache on these drives is not journaled.
Don't move the drive while it's spinning. Not even a nudge. That's how 80% of these failures start.
Buy a powered USB hub if you're running multiple externals off one laptop.
Replace the micro-B cable every 18–24 months. They're $5 and they fail more often than the drive does.
Keep a second copy somewhere else. Any drive with moving parts will fail. It's not if, it's when.