Ok so my dad got this external hard drive to backup some of his data, and I used Western Digitals built in software to password protect it. Sure enough, I can't remember the password and right now the drive is useless. Anyone know if there is a way around this? Will formatting the drive work? There isnt any data on there right now.

You won't be able to format the drive without the password. So formatting is not going to work. I have heard that you can contact the manufacture of the disk and they can provide a password to unlock the drive -- but I have never heard of a person actually doing this and I suspect it is a myth... as the existence of a password like that would have a negative effect on the security of other existing drives.

I have also heard of exposing an EEPROM to UV rays... for drives that store the password in that manner. That's a more realistic solution but has other risks associated with it.

In short, remember the password. If you set it you should be able to remember it...

You could try this http://www.rockbox.org/lock.html