I had WD passport essentials SE and like the hundreds of people out there even i never created any passwords while WD smartware asked me one and here I am with no access to my WD and expecting the worst.
Bill the way you represent WD and deal with people who suffered losses of their valueable data shows how irresponsible your company is. I will try and make sure everyone i know that WD is a **bleep**!!! I will never in my entire life buy a WD product.
Thanks for ruining my 100 dollars…
I’m sorry, what did I do that offended you?
ok just to let you know i also have a wd my essentails 1tb and it became ( as far as i can tell locked from a xp mechine i was using i have been able to open it although using az live cd version of linux and then copying the info i almost lost so just a workaround not a pure fix linux should be able to access a locked hd and then you can copy the files you need so good luck with that hope i helped
I’m having almost the same problem. My 1tb essentials shows that it’s not locked, but will not allow me to retrieve any of my files, and wont register itself on my laptop even with new smart start download. All it show me is an empty file…
Please help…
madmark
There IS no solution, as the long list of desperate contributors to this thread will teach you. It is a malfunctioning product.
^correction. there is no solution for end users. but there is a solution for this, and we use it constantly.
Sullotion is take your Losses and throw away this WD Hard drive and never buy another WD Product again … There is NO Customer Support and they try to make US look stupid and Blame their Bad Firmware on us by telling us that we didn’t download it properly …
help me please guys.my 500 WD external hard drive is showing in the disk management panel but it is denying me to open in the my computer pane am using win 7 professional.please any help will be much appreciated.
“Media is write protected”
Fatsan
Had the same problems. Did a system restore to pre-firmware and smartware updates and everything is running like it should. Currently running my 1TB with only the SES driver and I’m not having any issues.
This is almost too simple, but if it can help 1 person, it’s worth it.
The same thing happened to me: my MyBook Essential drive locked itself up on its own accord.
When I first realized that my drive was no longer visible in Windows, I dismissed the problem as one of those intermittent quirks; thinking my next reboot would fix everything. Wrong. I then tried all possible combinations of disconnecting the drive from the computer, powering down the drive, etc. Nothing changed, the drive was still invible.
It’s only then that I installed WD Smartware and realized that the drive was locked. Locked!!! **bleep**! Like you, I did some research, tried a few more things (like powering down the drive for 1-2 minutes), but nothing worked. Sounds familiar?
After surprise and denial, came anger… and a few hours later eventually, acceptance.
At that point, I powered down the drive and disconnected all cable from it. I let the “brick” sit there overnight , dreaming of the ways I could end its days for having failed me in such a treaturous way. The next day, I thought what-the-**bleep** and reconnected the drive , giving it one last chance… Ta da! The drive reappeared in Windows , accessible and functioning as if nothing had ever happened. I think I scared it back to life 
As I said, almost too trivial to be a valid solution, but if you haven’t tried it, give it a shot. It worked for me. That being said, the whole experience still has me looking for another backup solution/drive. I no longer trust the WD My Book drive to hold the only remaining copy of my data.
Hope this can help. If not, I feel your pain.
Martin
P.S. I find WD’s position unacceptable to say the least. The fact that they try to dismiss or downplay the problem, or worst blame it on the users, is what got me the most angry.
MartinK7,
I would back up your data from that drive to another. It’s possible that some corruption has affected the drive. I’ve seen it happen where the drive locks with an unknown password if the file system gets corrupted. In your case, it may be just a file, and that’s why it showed up again because it cleared the buffer, but I wouldn’t trust the file system integrity.
Also, I would install Smartware just to run the diagnostic tools and check the drive for bad sectors. Please keep in mind, you need to always have your data in multiple locations. Putting it all on an external drive is not backing it up.
i have the same problem with my 500 GB WD external hard … moreover i can’t format it … i enter the password more than 5 times but the choice of formation dosn’t appear for me … just the message of " invalid password " … anyone have an idea ??? 
BaD_BoY wrote:
i have the same problem with my 500 GB WD external hard … moreover i can’t format it … i enter the password more than 5 times but the choice of formation dosn’t appear for me … just the message of " invalid password " … anyone have an idea ???
If Smartware is not installed you will not get the option to format the drive
Install Smartware and retry
i have already installed the smartware but the choice of formating doesn’t appear for me even after alot of tries …
BaD_BoY wrote:
i have already installed the smartware but the choice of formating doesn’t appear for me even after alot of tries …
try another computer
Ok, this same thing happened to me. I plugged in my WD HDD and it would not recognize it. Then, suddenly it did. I had it password protected and could not unlock it. It said my password was invalid. (Which it was not.)
The message came up that asked me if I wanted to erase and reformat. I opted to NOT DO THAT.
MY FIX:
I went and bought another WD HDD. My guess was that the smartware install was corrupted somehow on my PC.
Incidentally, I updated the smartware a few months back, but then I lost power and the update was interupted. Yes, this power interuption occurred while the external hard drive was plugged into the computer. I felt this somehow corrupted a file somewhere and no matter what I did, I could not access the drive.
After buying the new WD external hard drive, I installed the smartware software that was on the new drive. I plugged my old drive back in and it recognized it immediately. I input my password and it finally worked. Thank goodness.
I don’t know if this will help any of you out there, but after much anxiety and stress, this solution worked for me.
BTW-I removed all the security from the drives after I was able to access it again. I’m not going through that **bleep** again. What a pain in the @ss.
Hi
I totaly agree, I purchased mine the pc wanted a driver ,eventualy i downloaded one it now see the drive but wont unlock
why arn’t drivers supplied and why can I not unlock the drive
Never had this trouble with other external hard drives.
Lopsided
can someone tell me how to unlock the WD. Tks
we have solution for this issue and recovered many WD drives with this kind of problem, our webpage ( removed )
finally was able to formatt my wd hdd
but now facing a new problem, the smartware now says the disk is not writeable.pls help
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