I had to format my pc, reinstalled win vista home and can’t remember if there was a disk that came with the drive, but now its not recognised at all, it seems to need a driver.
I’ve downloaded them from here, but nothing worked.
Which is exactly the drive that you have ? that model # provided don’t help me Sorry 
the model # is WDH1U6400CN
My Book Essential Edition 2.0. USB
Oks 
, you will find some troubleshooting steps below :
1-Try another usb cable
2- try another usb port in your computer
3- another power cord if you could get one
4-connect the drive into a wall outlet
5-does your computer makes a sound when the drive is attached to it? if so let me know
Hope to hear from you Soon 
ok, I now have “my computer” recognising the drive and I just assigned a letter to the drive, so now the issue is for me to get into the drive, windows want’s to format it, and I can’t allow that to happen.
is there some way of reading this drive or do I have to send it to data recovery??
Since you got the drive recognized try something simple first. Remove drive properly reboot then plug back in. Sometimes this clears the cobwebs from windows/
Is the drive password protected? Data recovery is realy expensive. You might try some free recovery software like Recuva. You might be able to retrieve it with a Linux application that runs from a bootable CD there are a few free ones. I’ve experimented on a virtual PC but I’d try that last unless somebody else here has experience with it. I used UBSD4WIN http://www.ubcd4win.com/index.htm and on a virtual PC went to the USB drive and copied a file. The drive was working properly so I don’t if your drive would be accessible or not. If your are thinking about having a data recovery place do it I wouldn’t touch anything and disconnect it from PC.
Joe
