New Hard Drive

Hi,
I have a Passport WD . My hard drive was failing on my laptop, and i backed up everything including the image to my Passport. I have my new hard drive and it was installed, however during the restore feature with windows 7, it cannot find the image as the drive is locked. I inserted my old drive , which failing but still works, and i have access to my WD drive through the auto-unlock. However, when trying to change the password, it appears that i have forgotten my password. With it auto-unlocking, is there a way to keep it unlocked? I know that i can erase the hard drive. Here’s my issue, THere is 480 GB on that drive, and 20 GB of space on my failing harddrive. So, apart from purchasing a new hard drive and moving things over to that one, is there anything i can do. ALso if i just move the image to a USB that i created and restore my computer, will it recognise and be able to unlock the WD drive. Is there certain files apart from the Image that i could save? FOr intance, i put the image onto a USB, and in the system restore my image is restored. It is the same computer essentially, will it auto unlock if i also palce the software of the WD security as well…and then be able to auto-open the WD? THanks. My hard drive could fail at any time, so any help appreciated.

So …just to be clear, i can access my WD drive through auto-unlock on my current hard drive. That hard drive is failing, and i have a replacement. The image i created in windows 7 is on my WD passport - which i could move to somehwere else. Once restored to the image, will the WD recognize it as the same computer, and i will be able to unlock the drive through auto-unlock like nothing changed? Is there a file i could move to the new hard drive that would allow for that?