My Book Home Edition 2tb is no longer recognized or accessible in explorer after a software update

[lobojon]

My Book Home Edition 2tb

Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit

USB 2 connection

HISTORY:
All things have been running fine until I updated the software today.  Yes, even was using it minutes before updating.

For the update, I installed the My Book Home Edition Software (All)

I ran the anywhere backup software. Things went a bit haywire.
I looked at the forum, followed some uninstall, reinstall, and compatibility advice.
I also could not find anything in the forum that covered this identical situation.
I looked further and discovered some of this software is incompatible with my
system so I uninstalled it all and have restarted my laptop a few times.

I also have the wd smartware installed for my passport elite SE 1tb, by the way.

CURRENT PROBLEM
My Book Home Edition 2tb no longer shows up in windows explorer.  It is no longer accessible.
In fact, it gives me a message stating it needs to be formatted when I plug in the USB cable.
It shows up in my computer/device manager/disk drives with updated drivers OK
In my computer/storage/disk management, it shows as a healthy primary partition
and online, but does not show NTFS under the file system column like the other
external hard drives.
Nor is it not the pre-software update drive letter and name

I am running the DLG extended test on it now, which will take 20 hours it says.

The DLG window shows it in the logical drive box, but in logical drive box,
both file system and total space fields are blank.

It goes without saying that I must have access to my data. I work from this
drive.

So, what do I need to do in order for my book to be recognized and accessible again?

Thank you.  All advice is deeply appreciated.

[LB_WD]

It sounds like you may have a corrupted/damaged partition on the drive. Usually is a drive asks you to format it when it is attached to the system then Windows can read that a drive is there but it can't read the partition. If you format the drive then it should remove the old partition and replace it with a new one however, that will erase all data on the unit.

Since there is data on the unit that you need I would recommend that you contact a data recovery company to see if they may be able to retrieve the information for you. Since it is more of a logical type error with the file system you could try some data recovery software but I cannot guarantee that it would work.

[lobojon]

Yup, I figured that all out reading the forum and answer id's. 

It is too bad that WD software update did this to my external drive unless, of course, you have the tech explanation how that is not possible.  At the moment, the only variable from one minute to the other was the software update.  Therefore, I blame WD for this situation.  As far as I am concerned WD should be held responsible for my data recovery costs.

In any case, the question remains how and why the WD software update corrupted my partition.  And, most importantly, why is there no utility to undo this fiasco.  Obviously, I am ignorant of the tech side, so I that I am unaware of the meaningful or meaninglessness of my question.

The bottom line is that I updated my software in good faith and got a destroyed partition in return, which will cost me more than $300 to rectify.  Then, I will have to pay the money to send in the warranty drive for exchange.  This was a great way to ruin my days and productivity.  Will I bare a grudge?  Most certainly.  Is it rational?  Sure, why not?

Anyway, onward to glory.