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Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
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How to recovery encrypted data

May 21st, 2021, 1:21

Hello guys,

i have a situation when enter password western digital unlocker in wd passport blue ultra 3tb and it seems forgot the password and have no idea pressing erase drive button in the below after message too many attempt password. after press that button, explorer folder showing drive with condition is empty disk space. so the idea i would like to recover back the data. so i search my note password and found it. so i install the wd security to put back the password (hoping when locked in the same way and same password, the system will put back the data) unfortunately is not happen. explorer still showing empty disk space.

i tried to recover with wondershare recoverit and failed to recover because only found 7 items, not all the data.

how i can recover back the data for that case ? any experience, advice or suggestion are welcome.

Thank you

Re: How to recovery encrypted data

May 21st, 2021, 17:53

As far as I know, you can't recover it now.

Re: How to recovery encrypted data

May 21st, 2021, 18:10

It MIGHT be possible, however it is not possible to do with just software recovery tools.

Here is how encryption on WD works
User data is encrypted with Master Key, using AES
Master key is encrypted with User password
So the user password itself has nothing to do with encryption of USER DATA, it only encrypts the Master Key.

When you reset the user password using WD tool, the tool generates NEW Master Key, and all previous user data becomes scrambled.
No matter how many new user passwords you set after that it won't bring the ORIGINAL Master Key back, so user data will ALWAYS seem scrambled

However there might be a way to recover the ORIGINAL Master key (not every time) thus decrypting user data. But this is a job for a skilled DR Pro.

Re: How to recovery encrypted data

May 27th, 2021, 3:00

Thank you for detail explanation.

i assume this need to be done by pro with right equipment and tools and low chance to success.

Re: How to recovery encrypted data

May 27th, 2021, 3:06

Doomer wrote:It MIGHT be possible, however it is not possible to do with just software recovery tools.

Here is how encryption on WD works
User data is encrypted with Master Key, using AES
Master key is encrypted with User password
So the user password itself has nothing to do with encryption of USER DATA, it only encrypts the Master Key.

When you reset the user password using WD tool, the tool generates NEW Master Key, and all previous user data becomes scrambled.
No matter how many new user passwords you set after that it won't bring the ORIGINAL Master Key back, so user data will ALWAYS seem scrambled

However there might be a way to recover the ORIGINAL Master key (not every time) thus decrypting user data. But this is a job for a skilled DR Pro.


are you can do the recovery if that become a services. please pm me with offer, chance or other thing i should know .

thank you
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