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I m using WD my passport hard drive in windows 7 . It is password protected which i am able to open in any windows OS but i am unable to unlock and mount the HDD in ubuntu 12.10. How can i access my HDD on Ubuntu 12.10 ?

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2 Answers

Western Digital use a proprietary hardware method to supposedly achieve FDE (Full disk encryption) although it actually appears to be just a blocker, not encryption. It doesn't conform to the specification for FDE.

There's no Linux solution to this since Western Digital will not provide one. There are reports of people being able to unlock the drive however, buy installing Windows in a VM, unlocking the drive, then disconnect the drive from the VM. Linux/Ubuntu will then be able to access it for that session.

Most people seem to be recommending that the password protection be turned off after which the drive can be used normally. According to reports the drive does not need to be unencrypted, and there is no further trouble accessing the drive. eg Ubuntu Forums

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I just went to a computer with Windows, hooked up my passport, installed wd security on that computer, ran it, and turned off the password on my Passport. Since then, I have been able to use it with ubuntu with no problems.

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