Passport password problem

When I first bought my Passport Essential SE 1TB, I put in a password, but disabled. I’ve been operating this way for 6 months. Then all of a sudden the password requirement was enabled, and the password I’m 99% sure I registered does not work, nor do amy of the dozens of other ones I’ve used in the past. This is very frustrating. I am locked out of my valuable data thru no fault of my own. How can I disable the passwork locking? This doesn’t give me much confidence in WD products. Thanks

The password can only be removed by erasing the drive. You’ll need to enter the wrong password five times and then it will prompted you to erase the drive. 

Hopefully you had a backup of those files.