I purchased my My Passport Essential SE approximately five months ago. When I set it up, I chose to protect it with a password that I knew I wouldn’t forget. My device worked fine until today, when I typed in the password and SmartWare rejected it. I tried all possible variations of the password, and nothing worked. I did not change my password, and I have not updated the firmware since I purchased the device. I do not want to format the drive and lose my data. I know my password is right, and I don’t understand what is wrong with my drive.
Try a different computer and see if any difference
there’s a chance the partition got corrupted
I tried it on another computer and it still didn’t work. I don’t understand why it would suddenly stop accepting my password.
Could be corruption as I mentioned
you can try updating the firmware on the drive
I tried to update the firmware, but it prompts me to unlock the drive in order to update and my password still isn’t working.
Check the password hint ( if any )
if not you will have no other option than erase and start over with the backup
I don’t have a password hint because as I said above, I know my password. I’m unwilling to “start over” because the drive is clearly defective, so I don’t want to lose more data by trying to use it again.
If that’s the case you can replace the drive
try contacting WD
That still won’t get me my data.
I did, they emailed me a few times and then stopped responding.
