[wplug] Gparted destroyed my new WD Passport

[Ryan Moszynski]

so, i'm wondering if parted actually "destroyed" your hd.  If your
kernel is <2.6.18, it may have just not done anything to the drive at
all.  I ran into this problem with an external drive of my own.
Apparently the usb stack got a big update in .18.

If you haven't already, i would try the gparted live cd:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

(it's a 30mb dl, and it comes with a newer kernel)
and see if you're still having problems.

ryan