My Passport essential 500gb External HDD, virtual drive not detecting

Greetings, 

I own a 500gb My Passport Essential HDD which i’ve been using for a couple of years now and until now worked perfectly, but now, for some reason,when i plug it in, the My Passport 070A HDD is being detected, but the virtual cd driver is not coming up and is not available , so i can’t unlock my HDD and cannot open it, The HDD does not come in My Computer, but in drivers and devices, comes as working properly… but i cannot find or open the HDD. Please do help. 
Is there any way i can get it back without loosing all my data? … I Really need that data and cannot afford to loose it, it has very important files of mine on it… please please do help… Thanks 

You just need to download smartware and unlock the drive in the setting tab,  http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=209&lang=en