My passport not appearing in Windows explorer, fails initializing.

I would put the drive in another enclosure and give it a try.

Sounds like the disk its self has failed. Best thing here if you need the data is to send the drive off to a data recovery service like DriveSavers

"There are 2 levels of ""availability"" for drives. If you see the drive but cannot access it, the controller card on the drive is functioning. This does not require actual access to the drive. Think of this as looking into a garage and seeing a car. Yep, its there... No need to know whether or not the car works at this point.

Next is gathering information about the drive. This can be done as that info is often in the controller too. If not, then the ""home"" position of the drive usually contains this information and can be read. Any additional functions require the drive to actually function (heads move, data read etc.)

From your description, I would guess that the drive has failed and that you are ""seeing the car, but not starting it"" This is not a failure of the carrier, but of the drive itself. Data recovery is likely the only choice here to save the data.

Dan"