I forgot my WD external hard drive password. When I plugged it into my laptop it required a user password. How to unlock a password-protected external hard drive and access the data on it?
In the age of the Internet, people are faced with the transparency and convenience of information. We are enjoying the benefits that the era brings, while at the same time falling prey to the loss of privacy. For security purposes, people usually set a password on their computers and hard drive to prevent confidential information from being stolen.
However, if we forget our password, we will be in a quandary. According to the Q&A research, there are quite a few ways to get the power-on password, while unlocking a locked hard drive without a password is not easy. Do not despair! This article shows you how to unlock a hard drive and how to recover data from a hard drive.
How to Unlock a Hard Drive with a Password?
1. How to Encrypt a Hard Drive?
A password-protected hard drive should be a safer place to store information. Follow three easy steps to encrypt your hard drive.
Step 1 Search Control Panel for “BitLocker Drive Encryption”.
Step 2 Turn on Bitlocker.
Step 3 Enter the password to complete encryption.
You have now successfully set a password on your hard drive. What to do if you forget your hard drive password? Let’s move on to the content of unlocking the password.
2. How to Remove Hard Disk Password?
The priority might be that you go to a professional technician for help and some will say it can’t be fixed, you need a new hard drive. Others ask for money. If the budget is available, it’s a good idea to ask someone to fix the problem. This will save time and be energy efficient.
However, if you have a great trial to fix it yourself, just follow me.
Step 1 Press “Win + R” to bring up the “Run” interface.
Step 2 Enter “compmgmt.msc” into the Computer Management interface.
Step 3 Select a locked drive to perform a quick “Format”.
During the formatting process, three notifications will pop up:
- Back up your data before formatting
- All your data will be destroyed
- Your BitLocker will be removed
After checking the notifications, you can claim that very important data is stored on the disk. Then you will face another problem: How to recover deleted data?
Don’t worry, there is an efficient and effective method. Let’s explore it together!
By the way, if you find that your Mac hard drive is locked and password protected, you can check the page and get the solution: How to Bypass Having a Mac OS X Password.
How to Recover Data from Hard Drive
After removing the password, you will have access to the data on the hard drive. If some data has been lost, you can recover it with hard drive data recovery software. Recoverit Data Recovery is a safe and effective hard drive recovery software that recovers lost videos, photos, music, documents, emails, etc. from your computer’s hard drive, as well as USB sticks, external hard drives, and other storage devices.
3 Steps to Recover Data from Hard Drive Without Password
To recover data from a hard drive, you need to download and install hard drive recovery software and then follow these simple steps. If your hard drive is an external device, connect it to your computer beforehand.
Step 1 Select the hard drive
When you launch Recoverit, it will show you a list of hard drives detected or connected to your computer. Here you must select a password-protected hard drive and click “Start” to continue.
Step 2 Scan your hard drive
The recovery program will start scanning the locked hard drive to make visible any hidden, inaccessible, or lost data. Wait a bit and you should be able to get the scan results.
Step 3 Recover hard drive data
Once the scan is completed, you can preview various file types such as images, videos, audio, documents, and many more. Click “Restore” and save them to a secure storage device.
In just 3 steps, you can recover lost, deleted, hidden, or locked data from your hard drive. All you need is just Recoverit Data Recovery, a data recovery software that works on Windows and Mac computers.