WD MyPassport 1TB only works through USB 2 ports, USB 3 not recognised

Hi, to cut the story short, mypassport external drive suddenly stopped being recognised on USB 3 ports (it lights up and spins, but no drive shows up) whereas the USB 2 port is working fine albeit slow obviously. The SMART data show 700 hours of being powered on and everything else is fine (It's 5 years old but hardly used except for movie/game backups). I tried using a different cable but that made no difference and I tried a different computer but still wouldn't work on anything that's not USB 2.

Mind you, there was zero degradation in performance before it happened, and it worked flawlessly. Moreover, USB 2 speeds are saturated 35mbs read/25mbs write. I'm worried because every time I plug it to a USB 3 port, it doesnt show up forcing me to just disconnect it. I already uninstalled USB 3 drivers but that didn't help at all and my other Seagate Expansion (week old) and Sandisk USB 3 flashdrive operate normally. I attempted a scan by HDD regenerator but no bad sectors were found. Occasionally, say every 1/25 tries, it would show up on the USB 3 port and work normally so I'm not sure what the problem could be :/

The only thing I could think of is a faulty logic board on the drive itself? But why would it see the drive then if I try long enough.

Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

PS: This is on an Acer v7 Nitro 791g

The age of the drive may be a clue

(It's 5 years old but hardly used except for movie/game backups)

as some USB 3.0 devices don't always 'fall back' to USB 2.0. USB 3.0 ports on a computer usually have a blue center and the USB 3.0 cables also which will not fit in USB 2.0 devices although they will plug into a USB 20 port. USB 2.0 ports and cables have black centers. I have 2 WDC MyBook USB 3.0 drives [2TB and 4TB] and a MyBook USB 2.0 drive so the described cables are correct for the brand, probably also an industry standard.

A note: after getting and setting up the 4TB drive I discovered it it formatted as exFAT rather than NTFS, quite usable on most Operating Systems such as my osMAC and Linux in addition to Windows. One of the 4TB is a replacement for a 2TB where the added interface in the case went bad, the drive itself seems to be fine.

Hi,
The USB port is indeed blue and so are the cables of the drive (including the new one which belongs to the Seagate) and like I said, it functions normally but not on the WD drive. I tried using a usb 2 cable on the drive and it functioned on the USB 3 port with USB 2 speeds. So I narrowed it this way to the port on the drive itself I suppose. I just don't see why it would quit suddenly even tho (like I said every 1/25-30 tries) it'll appear normally.
Is there a reason why the drive refuses to be seen on a USB 3 port?

The USB 3 ports are actually wired with leads for USB 3 and leads for USB 2. Since you narrowed it down to the WD device, maybe there is problem with the USB 3 leads on that port. Take a good look at the pins on the WD drive.
Pins 1-4 are USB 2 and pins 5-9 are USB 3.

sygnus21 said:

All that said, make sure you know whether your Passport drive is 2.0 or 3.0 compatible.

It is USB 3 compatible, like I said, it's been functioning normally for 5 years of minimal usage, the total power on time is hardly 15 days and WD diagnostic tools indicates the drive is healthy.

The problem here is that regardless of the cable used for the WD drive, it refuses to be seen through the USB 3 port, only through USB 2 and that's after testing it on another machine too. What I found is that Micro usb cable works through USB 3 (blue coloured port) normally, but upon inserting a USB 3 cable, the port no longer "sees" the drive, but it powers up and spins. I tried looking for any defects on the micro port on the drive itself but can't seem to find any faults with it, nor on the male connector. I can try cleaning it with isopropyl alcohol to see if its dust?