Almost two weeks ago, I tried to connect one of my external USB hard drive to my desktop, but without any success. The files I wanted most were already backed up to a different disk, so I was not expecting a bit loss. However, I had a set of benchmarks that could be useful in the future. Ok I said, it is not a high priority, but how can I recover my data? Here is a number of steps I followed trying to recover the disk: 1. The disk is a WD passport USB drive. I noticed when I was moving the USB cable, the driver will disconnect from the PC. So the first obvious step was to try a new USB cable , but no luck. There was a small improvement in the transfer speed, but nothing serious (more on that later). 2. So the second thought was to open the case and connect directly the disk to the desktop PC. Unfortunately, the disk has embedded the USB controller and it cannot be attached directly to the PC with SATA cable. WD Passport disk controller with USB connector. A bit of mor