New wd elements shows access denied - Western Digital 500GB My Book World Edition 500 GB Hard Drive

First off don't freak your data is still there. If you were to plug that drive into a Linux computer you simply copy all the data. Anyhow in windows it sounds like you just need to take back ownership of the drive. so right click on the drive in Windows then Properties click on the Security Tab and hit that Advanced button. Then click on the Owner tab and click on edit. Then click on Other users or groups and add your user back. and put a check in the Replace owner on subcontainers and objects. I think that will do the trick.

If you have not reinstalled a new OS the drive should be seen after starting your unit.

Disconnect the USB drive and reboot your unit.

After the unit comes up, plug in the drive.

If the drive is new to the system, it will locate and load drivers.

Afterwards it should give the opium to view files.
It should also be seen in your device manager, under disk drive.

You should be able to go to prosperity's and see sharing opium's ect. ( Security ) Try to make your changes here

Login with Administrator account on Windows (Root account on Linux) connect the WD passport, access the files / change the permissions.

Disassemble the case, and remove the 400GB disk-drive.
Connect the disk-drive as a "slave" disk-drive to some desktop computer, and see if you can still access the files.

Get the serial-number from the label on the top of the disk-drive, and access Western Digital's web-site, to check if the device is still under warranty. If it is, W.D. will replace it, at minimal cost to you.

If the warranty has expired, W.D. has a "Customer Loyalty" program -- you can buy another external disk-drive from W.D.'s web-site, at a significant discount.

hi,
there is a reset button on the back, push it in with something small. You might need to hold it for some secounds. That should reset the device. There might be some more detailed instructions at www.wdc.com

If you click on open and it doesnt open then right click and click on explore by that it will show all what it has in it.but if it doesn't then you will have to reformat it to enable it work and function well.

I am having the same problem..computer is showing that its there but says its 'unaccessable'...access denied. a few days ago, my computer got turned off due to a power outage. when I turned it back on, the mybook was deleting itself.....It worried me, and it wasn't showing up on my computer for a little bit. eventually it was back on and had backed itself up. Now again after another power outage, it deleted itself and now its just at a stage where its saying access denied. sorry, I don't have a solution, I'm just like you, looking for answers. I had so much data on this, please don't tell me that I've lost it!

first u install usb driver

the file you need is called takeownership you have to google for it as it's in one of the forums the file is in the form of a zip file and when extracted you select the takeownership and install a little code into your reg and when you select a folder right mouse button on it and select takeownership this willl get rid of access denied garbage and give you full control over the folder and you do the same on any hard drive.

hope this will solve problems of access denied