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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 ?

Manas
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5 Answers5

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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

fabricator4
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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.

Walter Johnson
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First a correction: although it actually appears to be just a blocker, not encryption. It is quite unlikely to be just a blocker. See https://security.stackexchange.com/a/44733/13923 on how such encryption can be implemented.

Now for you answer, you can do any of the following:

  • Use a VM as explained in other answers
  • Do not use encryption (obvious :P )
  • Use some 3rd-party open-source software like KenMacD's wdpassport-utils.

Of course you should be cautious with the last choice, but you can always do some testing prior to regular usage. Needless to say, you should always have data you care about in at least in two copies.

Community
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LyK
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My solution

  1. Start the WD software under Windows (Win7 on my system)

  2. Under Drive settings -> Security, I disabled the drive.

It now appears like a plain empty drive around 950GB in size.

user1599018
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This works with Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS (Xenial Xerus).

ssh into your Passport and set your smb admin password as root

smbpasswd admin

On your Ubuntu system:

apt install smbclient
smbclient //{Your Server ip address}/{Your Share Folder} -U admin {YourPassword}
smb: \> ^C
mount -t cifs //{Your Server ip address}/{Your Share Folder) {Where you want it mounted} --verbose -o username=admin,password={Your password},domain=[WORKGROUP]

If you are running XWindows

apt install nautilus-share
zwets
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Steve Pardee
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