You tried to update the firmware and software for your 320 GB Passport Essential Portable Hard Drive. The drive was installed, but to your knowledge, not registered by a consultant. The hard drive was purchased and installed on a Windows 7 operating system.
You did not see any instructions on how to proceed until you finished, when you found and printed out the software update instructions, including a variety of warnings of which you were not aware of. You can no longer access Smartware at all. To the best of your knowledge you have no installation disk or files which would allow you to reinstall the program.
You might have the correct firmware and software for the model of portable hard drive you purchased. It is recommended that you reinstall both firmware and Windows 7 software. Basically, you install the firmware first and then the Smartware software.
You can view more detailed instructions at Western Digital’s Smartware software update page. You can download the Smartware firmware update 2.003 and the Windows Smartware software update release 1.2.1.26. Please follow their instructions and hopefully after reinstalling both firmware and software it will work this time. This fix was written for a Western Digital 320 gigabyte passport essential portable hard drive connected to a computer running Windows 7 but can certainly be used to troubleshoot other Western Digital external hard drives connected to other versions of Microsoft Windows.
