WD My Book 1TB locked out [ Edited ]

[m3lanie]

Hi there.

I bought a WD My Book last week and it arrived on the weekend. I seem to be locked out of the drive - after I managed to set a password on the Smartware software and now it won't let me into the drive at all.

I can remember the password no problem and have gone through a lot of the troubleshooting about removing the virtual cd and using Disc Utility.

All the options in Disc Utility are greyed out and I can't use any of them except for Verify, which tells me the harddrive is fine.

The lock light on the front of the drive is always on and when I tried to use the Virtual CD Manager download from this site, it told me the disk was locked and to unlock it - even when I try to unlock it in smartware, it doesn't unlock.

Is there any way I can wipe the drive and start again?

I'm running Mac OSX Tiger 10.4.11

Any help would be appreciated - I bought it from the Apple Store who accept no responsibility for these.

Melanie.

[cae02]

1.  Unplug and plug in Drive again.

2.  You will be prompted to type in password.

3.  Type five wrong password.

4.  After 5th time, you will be prompted with screen to check off and give your drive storage back in exchange of giving up data.  *** There is no way to get password back (no exception; not even from WD)***

[m3lanie]

Hi - thanks for your advice cae02.

I tried that and got to the 'disk would be wiped password cannot be retrieved screen' and i tick the 'i understand' checkbox and go to erase the drive and smartware crashes on me. Again and again and again.

I haven't been able to put any data on the thing yet - I hadn't even been able to get it running to use as a backup, smartware continually crashed on me and then locked me out.

Is there anything else I can do? I really need an external drive for my MacBook. Can I return the drive to Western Digital and get a replacement under warranty?

[cae02]

If you are using 10.4.x Tiger, try using either Leopard 10.5.x or Snow Leopard 10.6.x.

Since you have no data, I would try above before returning/replacement.

[m3lanie]

That isn't a viable solution - I can't afford to update to those OS. I could barely afford to buy this external harddrive.

The specs said it was compatible with my system!  I made sure to check that before I bought it.

I only found this forum after I'd registered my product.

[cae02]

m3lanie,

IC

I meant from your friend's computer or someone's else just to get drive to be usable again, not to purchase.