Met WD My Passport Invalid Password on Windows? Learn What to Do!

My Passport refers to a series of trusted and portable external hard drives and solid-state drives from Western Digital (WD). With up to 6TB storage capacity, you can use a drive to take a number of your important files such as photos, videos, music, documents, and others with you.

The WD My Passport drive comes with backup software like Acronis True Image for Western Digital and password protection (+ 256-bit AES hardware encryption) to defend against ransomware to protect data.

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To unlock your encrypted drive, a password is required. However, WD My Passport invalid password may block you from unlocking it. This is the topic we talk about.

How to Fix WD My Passport Access Denied & Recover Files

This post explains several ways to fix the WD My Passport access denied error and shows you how to recover files from an inaccessible drive.

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Invalid Password Error on WD My Passport

After entering a password, the message shows on the screen, saying “Your Password is invalid”. Sometimes you still fail after all kinds of combinations. Even the same password was working previously but suddenly stopped working. In this case, you are not able to access data on your WD My Passport drive.

There is no option of forgot password for you to reset it and the technical support cannot offer a new password to access your encrypted data. Without the correct password, you will permanently lose access to your data.

The only way you can do is to erase the drive to make the drive usage again. This operation will destroy your data and cannot be undone. Pay attention to this point.

If you decide to erase your drive in case of WD My Passport password not working, take the following steps that are based on a WD official document.

Also read: 3 Ways | How to Erase WD My Passport External Hard Drive?

Steps to Remove Password Protection & Reset Password

Step 1: According to Western Digital, exceeding the maximum of 5 password attempts will trigger the 5 Incorrect Attempts message. So eject your WD My Passport, disconnect the drive, and connect it to your PC again, then try the password five more times.

Step 2: Open WD Drive Utilities, enter a volume name, select a file system format, check the box, and then click the Erase Drive button to begin erasing and reformatting your drive.

Later, open WD Security, and you can set a new password for this drive.

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Suggestion: Back up External Hard Drive

The invalid password error on WD My Passport is annoying and you can only erase it to remove the password protection and reset the password. Thus, to ensure your disk data security, you had better back up important files on the drive when it is in the normal status to avoid this situation again.

For data backup, use MiniTool ShadowMaker which makes various backup types including automatic backup to an external drive, internal drive, USB flash drive, etc. It works well on Windows 11/10/8/7 to protect your data against a range of threats.

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Wonder about file backup using this backup software? Refer to this ultimate guide on how to backup files.

Bottom Line

Are you encountering WD My Passport invalid password error on a Windows PC? From this post, you know the measures you should take. Follow the instructions we show and easily fix this issue.