Problems with WD My Book Home Edition

I am having a hard time with Windows Vista which is not recognizing a newly purchased Western Digital My Book Home Edition 500GB external hard drive. Although it is listed in device manager and i hear a sound when i connect it in the pc, it isnt recognizable. This drive is compatible with Vista as its technical specs say and I have already downloaded its firewire drivers but that is not of any use since I cant get to the .exe file that is needed to use the drive. How do i solve this problem, please help.

If you go into control panel and then in administrative tools and then computer management and then disk management, then does it shows up that it is activated? If so, then try to format it either into FAT32 format or NTFS file format and then try to assign a drive letter in the disk management. Does it work then or still it isnt working?

You said that you have downloaded the latest drivers for it, which might be listed in the C: drive area in some download folder. Try to disconnect the external drive before you run the setup and then at the middle of the setup i think it will ask you to connect the drive in your computer, and it will then start to install the drivers for the drive. Also check the cable that you are using to connect the drive to the pc, whether it is faulty or good? Try to connect the drive in some other computer and see if its getting recognized there, if not then it sure seems to be a bad external hard drive.