Wd my passport locked! i never set the password

Divyrus · May 26, 2011, 5:52pm

HELP PLEASE! I have been using my 500 GB external WD hard disk for about six months and I HAVE NEVER SET A PASSWORD. And suddenly now, WD unlocker comes up and it doesnt even ask for password!!!

It just says password attempts failed and asks for formatting!!!

I NEVER SET THE PASSWORD AND AM SURE NO ONE ELSE DID!

HELP! I cant find this problem anywhere else!

Joe_S · May 26, 2011, 8:10pm

Sounds like something got corrupt. A few people have had success logging in from another account like the Guest account. Also try a different PC. By chance did you recently upgrade the firmware?

Joe

Divyrus · May 28, 2011, 12:35pm

No I have never updated my firmware!

Same problem on other PCs too! It was working fine one night and next morning ike this!

JimmyTango · June 17, 2011, 3:57am

I am the “go to” guy for tech issues at work… co-worker John handed me his drive (P/N WDBAAA3200ABK - 00) and said it wasn’t working anymore because it was locked up. I asked what his password was & he said he never put one on. He had a couple other people look at it before me; I have tried it on my laptop, as well as 2 PCs here at work, and all had the same issue:

Plug drive in
Autoplay pops up to “Run unlock.exe” when clicked…
WD SmartWare Drive Unlock window appears, stating:

“Too Many Password Attempts”

Have tried several times to power-cycle drive & PC… have attempted to install latest firmware… but I can’t do anything because it keeps telling me I’ve tried the password too many times as soon as it is connected. The only option given to me is to format the drive. I do not want to, nor does John want me to erase everything on his 320GB drive.

After searching the internet, I have found this to be quite common. Is there no solution to this well-known problem?

Joe_S · June 17, 2011, 4:14am

Sadly there is no known solution. The drive is hardware encrypted so trying to hook it up to PC internally will only get you encrypted data.

Joe

Bill_S · June 17, 2011, 6:11pm

@ Divyrus

Since you’ve pretty much lost the data on the drive. You could try updating the firmware to see if that does anything for you. Otherwise, you’re stuck with reformatting the drive and starting over. However, I would update the firmware to the latest version in either case. Make sure you follow the instructions completely.

hawd69 · July 12, 2011, 4:01pm

I have had the same issue as the previous posts. My drive is locked, however I never set a password. I tried the firmware update as suggested in the forum, however I cant do it without entering this password.

I am reluctant to wipe the drive… Any suggestions of what has worked for anyone else?

What else I am finding frustrating is that I am unable to find the drive in “my computer”. That said, the LED on the drive comes on. Could these two issues be related?

As another topic, if I am unable to get my data back, I will return the unit under warranty. If this is a common (or even relatively common) issue, is there perhaps another drive in the WD range that is more stable?

RoofingGuy · July 12, 2011, 7:14pm

hawd69 wrote:

I have had the same issue as the previous posts. My drive is locked, however I never set a password. I tried the firmware update as suggested in the forum, however I cant do it without entering this password.

I am reluctant to wipe the drive… Any suggestions of what has worked for anyone else?

What else I am finding frustrating is that I am unable to find the drive in “my computer”. That said, the LED on the drive comes on. Could these two issues be related?

As another topic, if I am unable to get my data back, I will return the unit under warranty. If this is a common (or even relatively common) issue, is there perhaps another drive in the WD range that is more stable?

As Joe said a few posts up, a few people have had luck by trying a different PC or logging in to the PC under a Guest account. But this hasn’t worked for everyone.

As for whether it’s “common”, I have a strong feeling that that depends on your computer more than on the drive itself. It certainly seems to happen with the USB-powered drives MUCH more than it does with the externally powered drives. In fact, insufficient power over the USB port to the drive seems to be the #1 cause of headaches, both with locking drives and other corruption issues, people have with Passports. Therefore, anyone whose drive is getting sufficient power can/will tell you they’ve used it for years with no issues and the issue isn’t the drive… anyone whose drive gets insufficient power will tell you the Passport is the biggest hunk of junk ever made.

If you still want the password capabilities and the encryption that your Passport offered you, you may find a My Book Essentials drive to be far more stable. I have many of them and have never run into any problems. Like anything else, no one can guarantee it would be problem-free for you, but when used properly, they seem to have no issues.

But, if you don’t care about the passwords and the encryption, you might be happier with a drive from the Elements line. Again, you’d preferably want a powered version, since it seems like USB power might be an issue for you. The Elements are just bare drives with no bells and whistles, so there’s much less to go wrong with them.