Is this a known problem with WD external drive security?

bbinnard · 06 Aug 2018

I've got an external USB3 WD 4 TB drive I use for backups. It is formatted as an NTFS drive. When travelling I take the drive and hook it up to my laptop. So I installed the WD Drive Security software that requires a password to "unlock" the drive and make it usable. All this has worked fine for a couple of years.

About a month or so ago I encountered some errors on the drive. I think the errors were caused by a power loss to my desktop system when the drive was attached to it. At any rate I used the Tools option on drive properties to repair the drive. This seemed to work OK, but I was still getting errors on the drive's Recycle bin. So I tried running CHKDSK on it.

CHKDSK reported it could not function because the drive was a RAW format drive (whatever that is). I opened Disk Management and it reported the drive was NTFS, and that the single partition on the drive was OK. But I was still getting errors with the Recycle bin.

I took off the WD Drive Security option and that seemed to fix everything: CHKDSK scanned the drive fine and reported it as NTFS with no problems. Also, the errors with the Recycle bin stopped appearing.

Google didn't find anything about this, so maybe it was just a 1-time fluke. But maybe not.

Caledon Ken · 07 Aug 2018

I avoid those enclosed drives by either WD or Seagate.

Way to many failures and when they report RAW you usually are into Data Recovery. You also can't tell if drive failed or electronics and since the drives are solder to enclosure electronics no way to separate.

Much prefer the OEM drive and connection methodology. Cable or enclosure.

You might want to try Veracrypt for your encrption. Open source and descendant of TrueCrypt.

https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/Home.html

Ken

bbinnard · 07 Aug 2018

Thanks for the tip about the drive being hardwired into it's case. I had thought about taking the thing apart and putting the drive inside the desktop case. Now I won't.

Caledon Ken · 07 Aug 2018

Yours maybe different... would do the research. Most are solder but that means they are unworkable if electronics fail. Nasty

DeaconFrost · 08 Aug 2018

There's nothing wrong with WD drives, but I've never heard anything positive regarding OEM security software. I use an extensive array of external drives at home and in the corporate environment. Unless you happen to have your drive out in public often or in us in public often, I wouldn't bother with security software. If you do and need to protect the drive, something more widely available, such as the above mentioned software will do the trick.