Hard Drive Reformatted & Ready But Can't Find WD Image File

After using an MyBook Elite for several years, I broke it – specifically by snapping the USB socket off the MyBook circuit board. Ooops. So I bought a new case from fleabay [a WD MyBook WDBFJK0060HBK-04], then installed my 750-GB WD drive, got it properly NTSF-formatted via Windows 7, and everything is good… Except the SmartWare 2.0 software won’t run, because support and/or utility software needs to be loaded (restrored) onto the MyBook for it to proceed. The SmartWare Manual (circa 2013) tells me that after reformatting the drive, I should go to the WD support website and download a DISK IMAGE for this purpose. I’ve tried for several hours over three days to find this download, without success. Please help, I just want to get this device running again !! Thanks.

Here is the support webpage for My Book Elite:

http://support.wdc.com/product.aspx?ID=122&lang=en

What especially you are looking for? Normally you don’t need anything as all kind of actual software is provided by Windows.

My computer recognizes the external hard drive and similarly, the WD SmartWare software displays the drive, but it doesn’t recognize it as a supported WD drive – thus it won’t allow me to backup any files onto the drive. The drive has the “key” icon beside it, indicating an “activation code required” i.e., this is a non-WD drive or an unsupported WD drive, please visit our website and purchase WD SmartWare Pro. I don’t have the $$ right now to buy the “Pro” version.

Maybe I need to re-install the WD SmartWare software, rather than upgrade the version I had… (Will try this next).

WELL, that didn’t work ! This approach reset the SmartWare software, so that it started the set-up process on my external drive, but it still failed to recognize it as a WD product. So again, I’m getting directed to purchase an activation code, i.e., upgrade to SmartWare Pro.