I admit, I’m a bit clueless here but rather than make an attempt before knowing what I’m doing, I came here for help. I found my old My My Book Premium Edition 320 GBWDG1C3200N after thinking it was lost in a move long ago. The warranty date on this in 2007 so it’s old but seemingly ok. More importantly, it has pictures of my kids when they were babies so this is very important to me to try to recover the data! It didn’t have a power cable, but I ordered compatible cable and just plugged it in. It has juice! But I get a pop up that says “Microsoft windows: you need to format the disk in drive D: before you can use it. Do you want to format it?” I’m scared to say yes because I feel like that will wipe it… Am I crazy? Obviously this is probably 3 laptops later and I have nothing installed on this laptop. I just want to be sure I do things correctly. Any help is appreciated!
No one? Maybe even a link to setup? I’d love any help! 
Yes that will wipe the data. It sounds like the drive is possibly corrupted. I’d contact a data recovery company for your best chances of getting to the data.
Other things to try first:
- Try on a different computer (preferably with the same version of Windows you used it on last)
- Try with a different USB cable
Hi,
If you proceed to reformat the drive it will erase all the data on it. So, it seems the drive needs to adopt your new laptop configuration or the partition on the drive is corrupt. However, take a look at the following article:
https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=1164#win
Also, try connecting the drive to an old laptop (if you still have them).
Thank you both! It does show up as the D:// local drive so I’m hoping it’s recoverable. I may have to research what OS I was using then (ten years ago so yikes!) I may have to pay for data recovery but thanks for responding so I didn’t wipe it all! 
I appreciate the advice.
