Trying to share files to a different pc & os

My brother and I both have the same MyBook Essential 1.5 TB; him on Win XP, me on Win 7. He uses his for backup and storage., whereas I use mine solely for storage, as an extra drive (no back ups).

He lent me his, so I could copy some files and stuff onto my pc. However I cannot seem to access those files. Only the setup files show. So I start the WD Smartware.exe, but can’t seem to get anywhere. Either it mentions potential OS incompatability, or gets to a “configure drive” stage… I am afraid I’ll do the wrong thing here, and format or wipe his drive, which would be horrible. I am not sure the software doesn’t “think” I’m setting up the drive for the first time!

Why is this simple objective (sharing data) seemingly so hard? Any ideas (aside from me being a twit)?

Thanks!

Could be a signature conflict, check if the steps below help. 

Open your start menu
Right click “Computer”
Click “Manage”
Click “Disk Mangement”
Find the drive marked “offline” this should be whichever drive you connected second.
Right click “offline” and click “online” the drive should now be added with a new drive letter.

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Yes! That solved my problem. Thanks for your help dude.