My passport error message then nothing

wdbacy5000abk, am an old wrinkly out here so take care plug in, error message box says need permission to enter photo files ect ,then p/port just sits whirling away doing nothing, light is on , should i have an icon, or should a page or something come up to start up ?? or have i not started it up correctly from new??

What operating system are you using to access the passport?

did you use any software to copy the pictures to the drive, and are you using on a different computer than the one you copied files on?