I am trying to backup my Mac Book to my My Book Essential WD Hardrive but it isn't even letting me open it to view the contents of the hard rive in order to know what I need to back up etc... My older version of My book lets me open it. Help??

BreannaHatton wrote:

Keeps saying the WD smartWare needs to be updated by manufacturers in order to unlock the Hard drive? Something about the 32-bit app compatibility

The error message you posted tells you the problem and exactly what to do.

Check the WD website for an update to the proprietary WD software for your external drive that is compatible with Big Sur. If WD doesn't have a compatible version of their software, then you are stuck unless you erase the drive and allow macOS to manage the drive. Beginning with macOS 10.15 Catalina macOS no longer supports 32 bit apps:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208436

These issues with proprietary software for managing external drives is why most contributors on these forums highly recommend using macOS to manage the external drives by using MacOS Extended (Journaled) if the drive is only used with macOS or use exFAT if the drive needs to be shared with Windows. Allowing macOS to manage an external drive eliminates issues when macOS is updated/upgraded. If the WD software is activating hardware encryption on the drive, then you will need to first de-activate the hardware encryption before you can erase the whole physical drive using Disk Utility and allow macOS to manage the drive.