Brand New My Passport Ultra 3TB No Unlock Prompt to unlock the device !

[FaiMaq]

Hello folks,

I am new here and just joined the community. I need help regarding my brand new My Passport Ultra 3TB drive which I got a week back and I am facing a problem with it. Actually I got it in my home country before flying to another one for work and copied all the data into this drive from my home laptop and encrypted it using the WD Security.

Now, in the host country, when I connected the drive to another laptop, I know that it detects the drive (installed all the drivers, shows up in the device manager and also in the disk management as fully unallocated) but I don't get any unlock prompt to put my password in to get it unlocked.

I brought another old WD 500GB drive as well from home and it immediately shows the folder which contains all the utilities and also when I open up the WD Security it asks me the password for this drive but for the new drive, no folder pops up with the Virtual CD option or anything, basically nothing happens and on the WD Security I get the "Set Security" option for this new drive which is strange because it already has the password/security set up and it should ask the password instead of the "Set Security" dialogue.

The drive has all my important data and I can't afford to lose that or mess up with it, not at this stage at least. At first I wanted to put in the same password on the "Set Security" page and see what happens but then I thought it might wash everything on the drive so I landed here.

Please help me with this, I hope I have provided appropriate details to explain my problem

Thanks,
R/Faisal` .

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to the community, Faisal!

I'm sorry to hear about issues with the WD My Passport drive! I'd recommend you attempt to resolve the issue by uninstalling it as a device from Device Manager. . Once you plug it back in after a reboot, it should automatically re-install itself. I'd also suggest you make sure you have the downloaded WD Drive Utilities on the computer you are currently using. Another thing you could try is disabling and enabling the Virtual CD on the WD My Passport. Hopefully, that will let you access your data.

I'd not Set Security again. Otherwise, you risk losing the files you currently have and re-formatting the HDD.

Keep me posted with the troubleshooting & good luck!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[FaiMaq]

Welcome to the community, Faisal!

I'm sorry to hear about issues with the WD My Passport drive! I'd recommend you attempt to resolve the issue by uninstalling it as a device from Device Manager. . Once you plug it back in after a reboot, it should automatically re-install itself. I'd also suggest you make sure you have the downloaded WD Drive Utilities on the computer you are currently using. Another thing you could try is disabling and enabling the Virtual CD on the WD My Passport. Hopefully, that will let you access your data.

I'd not Set Security again. Otherwise, you risk losing the files you currently have and re-formatting the HDD.

Keep me posted with the troubleshooting & good luck!
SuperSoph_WD

Hello @SuperSoph_WD,

Thanks a lot for replying. I tried your suggestions but nothing worked. Actually I already tried these basic steps on my own before writing into the community. I have the WD Utilities installed and I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the drive but nothing happened. As for enabling/disabling the Virtual CD, it did not work, I tried both methods, i.e. with and without the WD Smartware software but none of them worked. I downloaded and installed the latest version of the WD Smartware but there's no "Set up drive" option under the Settings tab there, as mentioned on their page online. I see only 4 options under the settings tab (File History / Retrieve Folder / Software Updates & Dropbox Account) but no "Set up drive". And with the option number 2 using the Virtual CD manager, it's not detecting my drive, I keep rescanning but it says, "Please connect a WD Smartware drive to continue, then click Rescan". So I couldn't get the Virtual CD to work

Any other suggestions ?


R/Faisal` .

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there again, @FaiMaq!

Sorry for the late reply. This is really weird because you should be able to unlock the drive from any computer, unless you're using an older OS that is not supported. It's unfortunate that you are unable to try in the original computer at the moment, though. I'd recommend you check if there is any older WD Software that has been installed that might not be handling the drive properly. I'd also suggest you check if the computer/laptop you are currently using has the latest USB Hub Controller drivers installed from the manufacturer's official website.

Let me know how it goes!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[FaiMaq]

Hey there again, @FaiMaq!

Sorry for the late reply. This is really weird because you should be able to unlock the drive from any computer, unless you're using an older OS that is not supported. It's unfortunate that you are unable to try in the original computer at the moment, though. I'd recommend you check if there is any older WD Software that has been installed that might not be handling the drive properly. I'd also suggest you check if the computer/laptop you are currently using has the latest USB Hub Controller drivers installed from the manufacturer's official website.

Let me know how it goes!
SuperSoph_WD

Hi,

Thanks for replying back. Seems you're the only one active here or my problem is a very unique one I have tried everything that you mentioned and have exhausted my options in terms of what I knew and what was obvious. No gain. I can't get Virtual CD to work for this drive. From what I understood from connecting the 3 WD drives that I have (one of them is a very old 500GB My Passport Essentials, the other one is an year old 1TB drive and the last one is this brand new 3TB drive) is that the only one detected by the WD Virtual CD Manager is that old 500GB Essentials drive. It also gives the option of enabling/disabling the VCD on WD Smartware under the Settings tab as you mentioned in your first reply. The newer drives are different and don't at all get detected by the VCD Manager and don't have the VCD enable/disable option under the Settings tab in WD Smartware. I read on the WD website that for newer drives, the unlocking mechanism is handled by WD Security software which I already tried but it only gives me the option of setting up new password on the drive and no unlock prompt appears. This new drive is shown in the WD Smartware having a small red cross symbol on it and only giving the option of "safely remove the drive" and all unallocated space. The taskbar icon of WD Smartware shows "0 usage", "no security"! This maybe due to the encryption or something but I am not sure. What to do ?

Do you know of any other good forums/sites where I put this up and get some quick repsonses ? The time is very important in this case.


Thanks,
R/Faisal` .

 

[FaiMaq]

Forgot to mention that I have already posted this issue on the WD community and have gotten the case escalated to their level 2 support but so far I haven't received any promising answer from them and for some reason I have little hope from them other than those crap routine replies.

Faisal` .