Accessing My Passport Drive outside own computer

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

Hi, I have a 2Tb My Passport portable drive. Have set it up to work with a Password for data protection.

I tried to use it at work (university), where I do not have administrator rights, and the computer keeps telling me that I am not allowed to install the driver, whenever I click on WD Drive Unlock.exe.

I can access the WD Drive Unlock Help and the About WD Drive Unlock where it says that:

The WD Drive Unlock software is provided by a virtual CD drive that is on your My Passport drive. Use WD Drive Unlock to:

  • Unlock the drive when you connect it to a computer that does not have the WD Security or WD Drive Utilities software installed

but this is no help, as the Password box does not come up at all when I plug in the portable drive.

Any ideas on how to address this?

Algarve

2

Algarve,

Unfortunately, unlocking the unit requires administrative rights. If the device needs to be used on systems with high security, when I would recommend disabling the security on your WD Passport so it no longer needs a password.

3

Hi, J Staff. Thank you for replying. Unfortunately, that defeats the purpose of having a unit with encrypted data. According to the information given by the product, it is supposed to have “a virtual CD drive” so that you can use it with systems/machines that do not have the WD software. If I cannot use it to keep my data secure, it does not serve its purpose.

4

Algarve,

That is correct, there is a Virtual CD named “WD Unlocker” that allows for the device to be unlocked without needing to install a separate application. However, the unlocker itself still requires administrative privileges for credential management.

5

Please could you explain why the unlocker requires administrative privileges for credential management. My understanding is that the encryption/decryption is performed by hardware on the drive itself and the password (the credential) is typed directly by the user. What part of this process requires admin rights on the host machine?

Thanks in advance,

Martin

6

mtSpace,

Because of security concerns, the unlocking system accesses very low levels of hardware interaction, prompting for administrative privileges.

7

I’m afraid that defeats the purpose of having a drive with password and encrypted data to keep it secure.

In order to use the Passport Drive at my place of work, I have to remove the security feature. I cannot access my own files in my Drive unless I do so.

What’s the point of having bought this Passport Drive, then? There must be a way of using the security features even if you are using the Drive on other computers and not just your own.

8

I have also 1T WD and I experienced the same problem! please inform me if in case you found any solution for this problem! Thank you very much ahead!

9

I have also experienced such problem!  What shall I do? The reason behined buying this storage was for carying data on it to access on other areas by using the available computer, but it doen’t work on some body others computer. Please inform me if you obtain any kind of solution for this and I will do the same if I found any!!