Hello Everyone!!! New member and a huge problem

New member. I just learned of this site today. I guess for my first post I have a doozy...


I have a 80 GB WD External Hard Drive that I have been using for about 5 months now. I got it because of my job. (I have to give a lot of classes and am limited to 1 GB thumb drives) I got authorization to use my external drive. Low and behold it has been sent an encryption file. I can't get it off of my hard drive. Everything that I have that is personal has been encrypted. I tried the Unlocker on the site but it isn't working. Can anyone help me with this.

 

Here's what I would do: copy everything off the drive that you want to save. It should un-encrypt the stuff as you move it to the desktop, or a folder on C: or wherever. Then format the drive. Use the Disk Management tool in XP (or Vista) to delete the partition, then reformat it. That should effectively remove the encryption software (and EVERYTHING else) on the drive. Then copy your saved data back to it. There are other ways to safeguard the data (if needed) that are less intrusive and not as potentially problematic than encryption, like password protecting certain folders for example.

..and Welcome to MajorGeeks! :major

 

You know, I was just thinking..... there's a less drastic way to deal this other than deleting and formatting the partition.... you'd still need to copy your data off the drive or un-encrypt and save it un-encrypted somewhere. Then edit the autorun.inf file on the WD drive. It will open with Notepad. You can remove the part where it loads the encryption software and save the edited file, or just remove the file altogether. When the drive is plugged into a USB port, it won't automatically launch the encryption software if the autorun.inf file is edited. If there's other software in the autorun file, it will still run if the line telling it to run is not edited out or changed; the same if the autorun file is not removed completely. But this may be a good thing as there may be some programs that you want to be launched when the drive is plugged in. If not, simply deleting the autorun.inf file should solve the problem.

Just be 100% sure that the data you want is stored somewhere in its 'natural' state, completely decrypted. If the encryption program is removed, and the data has not been saved in its natural decrypted format, you may never be able to unscramble the documents.... so be careful!

 

Thank you so much for the help!!!!!!!!!!!! I was able to save all of my files that are mine and delete the ones I needed to. I took part of your advice and then applied it to my archaic method (Cursing, screaming, punching, kicking) and got the encryption off of the drive.


I'm about the most computer illiterate person out there. But the directions you gave (and a little bit of trial and error) were easy to follow. I actually had to delete every fiel one at a time (40+ GB) that took forever.


Thanks again!!!