If you're not the admin, the 'forgot my passcode' drill is somewhat forgiving.

Brazilian and FBI codebreakers spent two years trying to decipher data on the hardware-secured drives of a Brazilian banker suspected of money laundering-before giving up in 2010.Īll these drives have an admin mode admins can create codes for up to 10 or so users and can reset a forgotten code. But if you store your sensitive info on one of these drives, there's a very good chance nobody will ever see it without your say-so. Even if somebody cracks open the case and removes the drive, there's still a 128- or 256-bit military-grade encryption algorithm built into the firmware, so your data is run through a digital Cuisinart before it's even written to the disk, rendering it unreadable. Fail the hardware tests and the drive locks up. But these drives won't even mount on a PC desktop unless you first pass a hardware-based authentication test: typing a PIN on a keypad, swiping a fingerprint, tapping an RFID badge, or entering a code displayed on a separate dongle. What extra protection does hardware encryption add?Ī system password is a software program like any other, so a determined thief can remove the hard drive from your computer, attach it to another machine, and crack the password.

External hard disk password protection