WD Passport Asking For Password When One Was Never Set

Jared

Administrator
Staff member
So I finally received one of these older WD My Passports that's asking for a password when the owner swears one was never set.

I've checked both copies of module 25 as well as the key sector and they match exactly.

I'm hoping to figure out what is flagging the drive to think it has a password set when there isn't one.

Can you guys provide me with many Shasta 3D module 25's as you can find? I'm hoping that by comparing enough of them (as Einstein suggested on HDDGuru) I can figure out where the flag is that's marking it as password locked when it isn't.
 

Jared

Administrator
Staff member
I managed to round up a lot of them, and what I'm finding doesn't look promising for my case anyway.

Seems ones that use the same encryption as this one typically look like this:
Normal Key Sector.jpg

Full to the end with data, as you can see. However, all copies of my client's key (both in SA and key sector) look like this:
Messed Up Key Sector.jpg

My guess is that the key sector in the normal LBA location was lost somehow (maybe a bad sector) and the one in SA was just a blank placeholder used before a new key is generated. When the LBA copy was lost, it probably overwrote it with the blank placeholder.

Looks like it's a loss.
 
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