May I have advice on getting WD Essentials 1110 to work on new PC? Thank you

Portable Drives My Passport
1

Please help me re- install my Western Digital My Book Essential 1110 in new PC.   I see the WD  in “My Computer” but when I click on it I get “Drive is not accessible.  The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.”  When I changed my USB2 cable, I get a dialog box that I need to  format the disc.  I got into the page with three files (Extras, User Manuals, and WD SmartWare) and two applications ( Unlock and WD Smartware) a “What is This” .  I  tried to install clicing on the WD SmartWare and it treis to install and then a dialog box that says  “No writable WD SmartWare partition found.” 

 What do I need to do to access my WD external drive files? ….and to Xfer more files?  Thank you.

2

You need to reformat the drive. Those are applications that came with the drive you can download them later if you want to use them.

3

Will I lose the data on my WD if I do this reformating?  THank you.

4

Yes

5

Ouch…  I do not want to lose my data.  It is the whole reason I bought / used WD for back up. 

Is there any way that I can retrieve my personal data from the WD?

Thank you

6

Sorry about that. Because when the computer asked you to reformat the drive already. Check this link for WD data recovery partners http://support.wdc.com/recovery/index.asp?wdc_lang=en

7

You might try booting from a Linux Live CD sometimes you can access a drive that way. A backup means 2 copies in different locations.

Joe