How to crack the password on my passport hard drive

Have you contacted Western Digital support about this?

You'd do well to crack a password if one has been set. I mean if it was easy to do it's a bit useless having a password system!

Maybe check the manual to see if there is any default password that is set.

Are you sure it's asking for a password to access the drive or to INSTALL it? If you don't have admin rights, and you plug in hardware to the system, it may ask for the password to install the device.

What message is coming up exactly?

A file system error like one caused by a sudden removal would not all of a sudden put a password on the drive.

You may be right I thinks its asking for the password to install the software, but why would it suddenly ask for this and what can I do

A greatful IT plank

You need to give it the admin user/password. Should be an admin account setup on your PC.

It just lost the hardware info for the device and needs to reload the drivers. But without admin rights it can't write to the proper places to copy those files.