Solved 2TB on external drive dangles over a cliff...

Migotop

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I have an external drive (2TB, my passport ultra) on which the whole disk is encrypted, not just a volume. When I connect it via USB, Windows automatically tells me the drive doesn't contain any known file type, would I like to format the drive? That's one click away from losing 2 TB of data. How can I disable this? (because anything not forbidden is obligatory).

Thanks!
 

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    windows 8.1
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If it is encrypted with some type of third party software, you would also need that software running on the computer you attach the drive to. Along with the security key to unlock the drive. Otherwise you now have a paperweight.
 

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System One

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What MIGHT work is downloading and installing the Windows version of WD Smartware. Once that is installed, when you next connect the drive, it should prompt for the password to unlock it. If you don't know the password, there is NO way around this! Encryption wouldn't be much good if you could easily bypass it.
 

My Computer

What MIGHT work is downloading and installing the Windows version of WD Smartware. Once that is installed, when you next connect the drive, it should prompt for the password to unlock it. If you don't know the password, there is NO way around this! Encryption wouldn't be much good if you could easily bypass it.

I think I didn't state my question very well, but here's the answer I found last night. When you plug an encrypted drive into windows, it assigns the drive a letter, but doesn't know how to talk to it because of the encryption format. When you mount the drive with the appropriate encryption software, another letter is assigned to the drive when truecrypt (or whoever) identifies and decrypts the drive. Now the one drive has two different letters assigned, and the one not recognized throws a pop up asking if you would like to format the drive. Woe is me if I accidentally or absent mindedly click "yes". The fix was to go into "computer management" and remove the drive letter, and from that point on windows won't say hi to the drive until the encryption software asks for a drive letter to mount the decrypted drive.
Thank you all! Sorry for the poorly worded question.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    windows 8.1
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    ASUS
    Browser
    firefox
    Antivirus
    avast
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