Problem unlocking hard drive on other mac computer

Hello,

I have a weird issue. Tried to google for solution, contacted the support, but haven’t got a solution that helps… 

The story is, that few years ago i bought My Book Studio 1TB for mac external hard drive. I was using it it on my late 2009 macbook pro 15". I wasn’t using it with TimeMachine or for any weird computer backups. It was just an external hard drive for my important work files. I just connected it when i needed to store or access files from there, when i needed.

The procedure was simple - i connect it to my macbook then just unlock it with a password and everything was working fine. Besides, the OS i was using on i my laptop was os x Mavericks as i recall. The WEIRD THINGS started to happen when i bought my brand new iMac (running os x mavericks too). When i simply connected the hard drive, nothing shows up. Then i thought i need to instal WD Smartware for my new iMac for sure. I did that, and the drive mounted, but when i try to unlock it, i got the message that i can’t unlock it, and there is 0 Kb… Then i connected to my laptop again - everythings just fine - i am able to unlock it and it shows 1tb.

So, it wasn’t such a big deal until i was using my laptop at the same time with  my iMac. But few days ago i spilled a lot of liquid on my laptop and it’s not working anymore… So, the only one computer is iMac. And i need somehow to access those files.

I hope i can access my life’s work somehow… Maybe i’m installing not the software i need? Because there’s 5 components that goes with WD smartware like:

When i specified the problem to the support directly i got the answer that mac doesn’t support WD smartware, just ‘some old versions, but officialy not supported’.

Hopefully someone can help me, thanks in advance!

Hi guzis, welcome to the WD Community. Whenever you connect your password-protected drive to a computer that does not have the WD SmartWare software installed, you can still access the virtual CD partition on your drive, and install the WD SmartWare software as usual. You will not be able to access the data portion of your drive.

To unlock the drive without the WD SmartWare software installed:

  1. Start the WD SmartWare Drive Unlock utility by either:

• Using your computer’s file management utility to open the WD SmartWare virtual
CD and double-clicking the Unlock file.

• Double-clicking the WD SmartWare virtual CD on the desktop and doubleclicking
the DriveUnlock icon.