Hi there! I have an old WD external drive that I cannot access because I cannot remember the password I used years ago. I called support but had a difficult time understanding the person who was trying to help. I checked the website and if I get the password wrong 5 times it will format the drive. I have pictures and videos from trips and other things on this drive I do not want to lose. I’m trying to find out if there is any way I can reset the password so I can access what’s on it. I cannot be the only one with this issue. I cannot believe it will wipe the drive with wrong attempts. That is making me mad. I hope someone can help with this. Thank you!
I’m trying to find out if there is any way I can reset the password so I can access what’s on it.
If it were that easy, then what would be the point of security?
That said, WD’s security is weak. I know of two companies that claim to be able to crack the security in most WD products, but it won’t be cheap.
To protect yourself against data loss, you can remove the drive from its enclosure and use a disc editor to back up the last 65536 sectors to a file. These sectors contain your encrypted security key. When you exhaust your password guessing attempts, this key is discarded and replaced with a new one. If this happens, you can restore the original key from the backup.
One suitable disc editor is DMDE.
