Hi Bobber123,
I’m running a Lenovo with Windows 8. A couple of thoughts on your queries.
I have a WD My Passport Drive which does not have a ‘button on the back’ which I guess is a power switch. I have not found my drive disappears spontaneously but have found that if I ‘Safely remove’ my drive using WD Quick View I do need to physically disconnect and reconnect the WD drive for it to become active again. It will also become active again if I switch the power off to the WD drive (it is attached to a powered USB Hub).
Regarding the greyed out Back up and Retrieve tabs in the SmartWare screen, have you tried clicking on the icon of your WD drive on Home tab? This should make them active. For some reason WD do not mention this important matter on the Home tab.
