What happens to the password if I disable the VCD through firmware upgrade or by any means

[Atif_Khan]

I have recently bought a 500GB passport Essential 3.0. I have password protected my drive. I have been reading through the forums that if we disable the VCD then the password protection on the drive will be disabled.

I want to inquire that if the VCD of a password protected disk is disabled by updating the firmware and disabling the VCD using either Smatware or VCD manager; will this also remove the existing password and expose my drive contents?

[RoofingGuy]

I thought the Essential 3.0 already shipped with the Unlocker VCD hidden, and that the Unlocker VCD only appears when you set a password (since it is required for unlocking the drive).  I don't think it will let you hide the VCD while the drive is password protected, for that very reason -- it's required.  I believe as soon as you remove the password, the Unlocker VCD will hide itself again.

However, if this is in fact an older drive that still shipped with the "Smartware" VCD, and not the "Unlocker" VCD, then I believe if you were to hide the VCD before removing the password, your drive would become un-unlockable until you unhide the Smartware VCD... in that instance, you'd pretty much need to remove the password first before hiding the VCD if you want the drive to remain usable.

Whichever VCD is present... a password-protected drive, with no means to unlock it, becomes an expensive paperweight.

[Atif_Khan]

Thanks for our reply but i need a verdict on this one as anybody's personal data is more important than what-ever the expense you make while buying an external drive. I dont know how it means for anyone else but for me its better for my  disk to become an expensive paperweight than to see my personel data scrambled in somebody elses hands.

Can anyone confirm me if my disk is password protected is there any way someone would still have access to the disks and bypass the password either by disabling the vcd or any thing else by any firmware upgrade or by any other means?

[RoofingGuy]

The password can not be bypassed -- not even by WD.

The drive can not be easily read even if you take it out of the enclosure, whether there's a password on it or not.

Sure, someone with access to a billion-dollar supercomputer might crack the encryption through sufficient brute-force attacks, but Joe BadGuy doesn't have the time or the resources to crack the encryption, whether there's a password or not.

To anyone without the password, the drive is useless, even with the VCD present and working.  Disabling the VCD doesn't make the drive any more secure... someone could just re-enable it to access the unlocker.

Choosing a strong password is always a good idea, tho

[Bill_S]

No, they cannot.  The drive uses hardware encryption.  If someone takes the drive out of the case, they cannot access the data on the drive.  The data is always encrypted on the drive, even if you don't use the password locker.  Password locking the drive just makes the data unreadable in the external case. 

When data is copied from your computer to the external drive, it is being encrypted as it happens.  The bridge board in the external case allows you to see the data until you lock it with a password.  Then you have to use the password to be able to see your data on the external drive.