WD My Passport Doesnt Work in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala

(OK this is my first post after a looong time so the reading is going to be bumpy ride for you)

I bought a WD My Passport external hard drive (750 GB, WD Smartware) recently and connected it to my Windows laptop and set it up. But when I connected it to my other laptop with Ubuntu, I was not able to see a drive so that I can add my files to My Passport.

I searched about this problem on Google and hit few articles which asked to look up the drive manually using a command and mount it manually. I tried it but the command didn't return me a drive, I found few more articles to debug the issue but none of them worked for me.

After some thought, I found that there is a WD Smartware installed in the My Passport which locks and secures the data with a password. Somehow this is not working with Ubuntu and therefore the drive is not showing up.

Fortunately, I saw that there is an option where we can unlock this feature in the WD Smartware when you connect to a windows laptop.

So here is what I did and what I would suggest people to do if they find the similar problem:
1. Connect the My Passport to a windows laptop
2. Open WD Smartware
3. You should be able to find a "setup" button and an option to disable the "lock feature"
4. You might have to update the firmware in order to see the option above.
5. Disable the lock feature
6. Disconnect the My Passport and connect it to windows laptop again to make sure its not asking for a password and also to make sure disable lock feature is enabled.
7. Now connect the My passport to the Ubuntu 9.10 laptop
8. Now you should be able to see the drive in Ubuntu.

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