I received a WD MyBook Essential for Christmas in 2010. I have transferred many of my files and pretty much all of my photos onto it. However, I just recently tried to access some of those photos and am unable to do so. Here is what happens. Two items pop up under My Computer. The first is WD SmartWare under drive E with a CD looking icon next to it. The second is “Local Disk” under drive F with a hard drive icon next to it. When I right-click on Local Disk and click on either Open or Explore, it tells me that it is not formatted and asks if I would like to format it now. Clearly, I don’t want to do this because I will lose all of my data, which is NOT an option as I am somewhat of a photographer and this is the only place where I keep my photos (obviously, that will change once I get things working again). When I right-click on the WD SmartWare and then click on either Open or Explore, a series of other files and folders pop up. One of them is WD Setup Application. I’ve clicked on that, it brings up the WD SmartWare program, but it only shows my computer, not the MyBook. Now, it did once show the MyBook, but it said that it had zero TB of files on it and zero TB of available space. Figure that one out.
Something I have done is call tech support today. They gave me instructions to download updates for Microsoft .NET Framework as well as Adobe Flash Player. I have done both of those things, installed them, and rebooted my computer. Still, I have the same problem with MyBook. Before that, I also tried uninstalling the software, but ran into the same exact issues. I would call tech support back as they have given me a reference number for further help, but they are now closed. I have been working on this issue for the past 4 hours. I was hoping someone here would be able to provide useful information. I want to get this fixed ASAP. Super frustrated. 
