My Book Elite - No writable WD Smartdrive partition available

I have a My Book Elite 1.0 TB external hard drive and cannot connect/see any data on the hard drive any longer.  I just updated the WD software that is installed on each computer (old laptop and desktop).  

I created a folder to save a backup of my old laptop I was going to do.  I created the folder to save the backup to and then saw some old backups.  I tried to delete one and it said, “the file is too large for the recycle bin do you want to permenantly delete the file.”  I said yes and it was gone.  I then tried to delete another backup and I was told I could not access the folder.  I tried to access some other folders where I saved backups of my desktop and was told access was denied.  I hovered my mouse over the folders and it told me there was nothing in the folder.  

It appears the external hard drive is is missing something since the light on the front continues to blink as if it is reading and/or writing something.  When I try to re-install the WD Smartware software I get a message telling me there is no writable WD Smartware partition.  The screen on the external drive still has the name I gave it when I initially bought it and set it up, is all black (instead of white) and does not tell me how much free space is available.  

This morning, I inserted my Acronis backup program in my desktop as if I were going to backup my desktop.  When selecting where to save the backup to, I was able to see all the folders on the external hard drive as if I were viewing them through My Computer.  

Can anyone tell me what I can do to be able to continue to use the external hard drive and not lose any data?  At a minimum, what can I do to recover the data so I can put it on another external I would have to purchase.

There are some corruption issues with the partition table

retrieve the files from the drive, test and reformat the unit