Password forgotten

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
#1

Hello

I have a WD passport and I lent it to my son in law who put a password on it. Now he has forgotten the password and I am stuck with this storage device and dont know what to do to get it working.

I have a macbook and am trying my best to figure out what to do. Can anyone be so kind enough to tell me what I should be doing?

I get a popup that there is a hint question but even that does not ring a bell with him and I am so fed up trying to get this on my own.

Any help will be welcome.

#2

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#3

If you enter a wrong password several times (I think it’s 5 or 10, maybe more) then you will get the option to reset the drive. This will completely wipe it and remove all data from it, but it will also remove the password. Basically the drive will go back to a plain unsecured empty drive.

There is no way to get access to any existing data that may be on the drive without the password (for fairly obvious security reasons).

#4

Tried it but it does not work. Used the wrong password at least 20 times and nothing. May be I will connect it to a Windows laptop and see if it works there. Thanks though for helping me.
Hope it is not encrypted password or else my drive is fried…

#5

Unfortunately, you are in a real jam.

Bad news, you are not going to like this (from My Book manual)

CAUTION! The WD Security software uses your password to electronically lock and unlock your drive. If you forget your password, you will not be able to access the data that is on your drive or write new data to it. You will have to erase the drive before you can use it again.

So, go to www.wdc.com and find the user manual in Support for your exact WD drive, download it, and do exactly what it says you need to do to unlock your drive. Any data on it will be erased, unfortunately.

If you get nowhere on this, maybe telling your son-in-law he just bought your broken drive from you and to please give you the money to buy yourself a new one (that you will never loan out to anyone again!) can be of some solace.