Hi, So I’m losing my mind with my 500GB Western Digital My Book Essential. The USB port on the motherboard in the external casing itself broke off inside, and of course my hard drive is password protected. I have all the software, updates, you name it on my computer pertaining to this hard drive. I have the hard drive itself hooked up to another casing from my friends 3TB element drive and the unlock application will not launch and will say “Application not started from virtual driver” I loaded the unlock.exe from the virtual drive which makes no sense at all. The quick formatter of the Smartware software can see the drive and format it but cannot bring up the screen to enter the password, which again makes no sense at all. I have 250GB of one of my friends files from his old computer on here and I need it fast and something that isn’t going to cost an arm and a leg. Please someone help me, cause I’m not paying 1,500 bucks to have the information taken off from a working hard drive. (Yes I have tested the hard drive and it is not failing.) I have a medium level knowledge on computers and software, so I’ll understand some of whatever has to be done. Please anyone help, I need this information terribly.
When I try to run the “unlock.exe” from the downloaded iso of the PP4R2 it says “You must run the Unlock application from the WD SmartWare CD associated with the drive you want to unlock. Click Exit, locate and open the related WD SmartWare CD, and then run Unlock to unlock the desired drive.” When I do this I get the application error.
The unlock is not going to work since you removed the drive from the enclosure
the partition remains on the drive
not sure if possible to retrieve data from this drive
If this is a drive that came with Smartware the data is hardware encrypted by the board with the broken USB port. You need that board or an identical one to decrypt the data. Try having the USB port soldered back on by an electronics repair place.
Joe
