I don't know, I'm asking you.
Fun story. My dad has a WD Passport Essential with it's fancy schmancy encryption. He set a password, locked the thing and forgot the password. So the drive is essentially useless. After scouring the internet for a way to recover the password, I learn that there is no way to recover the password or data on the drive, but the manual and other resources hint that there is a way to reset the drive and delete the data on it. WD apparently doesn't want people doing it though because I can't find any information on this process anywhere, and by anywhere I mean Google. So I'm here wondering if anyone figured out how to reset this damn thing. I've taken the thing apart and have a feeling that it might relate to jumping some pins. I've sent WD this question, but I doubt I'm going to get a useful response. If I do, I'll be sure to post it here.
My dad in his haste tried reformatting the drive. So I'm receiving it in possibly an odd configuration where the HD is not immediately visible in Windows, but its various utilities on it's "virtual CD" is. Disk manager says that the HD is write protected and apparently missing a partition table when I try to initialize the drive. Probably has to do with the encryption stuff. The various utilities won't let me do anything until I unlock the drive. I tried WD's Datalifegaurd to see if it could do anything, but it can't seem to find the drive.
It's a 750GB model. Model Number: WDBABM7500ABK-NESN
On the inside the drive carries the model number WD7500KMVV. It has an SATA label, but its PCB only has a USB port and unlabeled pins.
For those thinking about getting a passport: I don't know if it's been mentioned but there is a downside to the Passport's encryption. It's bricked if you forget the password unless WD's magic reset process is found.
Any help will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Fun story. My dad has a WD Passport Essential with it's fancy schmancy encryption. He set a password, locked the thing and forgot the password. So the drive is essentially useless. After scouring the internet for a way to recover the password, I learn that there is no way to recover the password or data on the drive, but the manual and other resources hint that there is a way to reset the drive and delete the data on it. WD apparently doesn't want people doing it though because I can't find any information on this process anywhere, and by anywhere I mean Google. So I'm here wondering if anyone figured out how to reset this damn thing. I've taken the thing apart and have a feeling that it might relate to jumping some pins. I've sent WD this question, but I doubt I'm going to get a useful response. If I do, I'll be sure to post it here.
My dad in his haste tried reformatting the drive. So I'm receiving it in possibly an odd configuration where the HD is not immediately visible in Windows, but its various utilities on it's "virtual CD" is. Disk manager says that the HD is write protected and apparently missing a partition table when I try to initialize the drive. Probably has to do with the encryption stuff. The various utilities won't let me do anything until I unlock the drive. I tried WD's Datalifegaurd to see if it could do anything, but it can't seem to find the drive.
It's a 750GB model. Model Number: WDBABM7500ABK-NESN
On the inside the drive carries the model number WD7500KMVV. It has an SATA label, but its PCB only has a USB port and unlabeled pins.
For those thinking about getting a passport: I don't know if it's been mentioned but there is a downside to the Passport's encryption. It's bricked if you forget the password unless WD's magic reset process is found.
Any help will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.