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I have a Western Digital portable external drive that I'd like to encrypt, because I'd like to take all my stuff around with me in a secure way. It's a fairly current drive, a Western Digital Ultra. I figure I could use the Western Digital Security software that comes with the drive. But I wonder how secure it is? Is my data actually encrypted, or is it hidden through some silly trick that can be circumvented? (Maybe it's just a lock on the drive controller, for instance, and the drive is accessible if removed from the enclosure.) Is the encryption pretty good, is it NSA good, is it TrueCrypt good? Also, can I access the drive on a PC that doesn't have Western Digital's stuff installed? Lastly, what about the data already on the drive? Will it be erased, is it encrypted in place, is it left as-is, etc. Obviously if it's all just a cheap trick, it doesn't really matter. But I wonder if new data is encrypted, and old data isn't, and whatnot. doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 08:08 on Dec 24, 2014 |
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Dec 24, 2014 07:59
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Graic Gabtar posted:Hi there, Thanks for the reply. My use case is that I'm just some dude with digital stuff of pretty high personal value, but also work product for various companies, some big, some small. I mostly don't want douches who would steal a drive to be able to see my stuff. Or use the drive at all, the bastards. But it would be even better if it were not hackable by anyone, ever. I have been searching the past hour and found this explanation right here: https://arnolddatarecovery.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/wd-full-encryption-hard-drives/ It's not fantastic news, but it's sensible enough given my purposes. Basically, what the blogger assumes (blog being written in 2011) is that the data is already encrypted during write with a 'master key,' whether you've locked the drive or not. When you assign a password, the master key itself is encrypted, more or less locking the lock. Issues with this are obvious: Is the master key is unique to each drive? Are records of the master keys kept somewhere, accessible to our friends at the NSA, or vulnerable to posting on the internet for any hacker to use? Obviously these are edge cases, but who wouldn't want their data as secure as possible? Again, I'm just going by my own limited understanding of what this blogger is saying, assuming he actually knows what he's saying. It's sort of supported by the fact that I just locked the drive with WD's software (I have a backup, so I'm good), and all my data is still instantly accessible: not lost, not being re-encrypted, just hidden behind a password. Or it's a trick, which seems unlikely if WD wants to brag about hardware encryption without getting egg on their face. So, though I'm not terribly worried, I'd feel a heck of a lot better if I knew more about what was really going on in this little blue box I carry with me. Anyone else have any insight?
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Dec 24, 2014 08:46
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Gromit posted:If you want some anecdotal evidence Anecdote from someone on the internet? Good enough for me. I'll see if maybe WD has a whitepaper somewhere that explains their encryption more completely than their other marketing materials, but the explanations I've seen so far are... mostly good enough? Maybe not quite as good as using TrueCrypt, though it has its issues, but the convenience tradeoff is making it worth it for me personally. As long as some sort of reliable encryption is occurring, it's most likely good enough. And like you say, if someone really wanted access to my data, they'd just pour water into my face or hit me with a phone book. edit: Most recent discussion I could find was this: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/44730/how-secure-is-wd-mypassport-lock The weaknesses the answerer assumes are related (I think?) to brute force cracking (and that's assuming that the master key is unique to every drive and not itself very weak): quote:Strong derivation would use a random salt, which then requires a source of randomness, and there is no reason otherwise to have a dedicated chip for randomness on the drive. Economics being what they are, chances are that there is no random salt. And it appears that there's no official word from WD on how the whole deal works, and some folks there are basically just inferring what they can from what little WD doles out and squabbling amongst one another as to the specifics. Again, I think this is good enough for me, for now, though obviously not as good as employing 3rd party encryption on top of it. I am a little surprised at how little WD is saying about this, though. Probably most folks don't really care. doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Dec 25, 2014 |
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Dec 25, 2014 20:04
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Blackula69 posted:I have an old WD Green hard drive that stopped working. It shows up in Disk Management but can't initialize, and reports its size as 0 gb. Western Digital's maintenance app says it's got bad sectors but fails immediately when it tries to fix them. Is it boned? yep longer: if you want to take a peek at more SMART data, use an application like Crystal Disk Reports or Speccy, which might give you a better hint. If a drive is 'yellow,' start shopping if you cherish your data. If it's 'red,' don't use it at all.
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Jan 2, 2015 20:15
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Ape Agitator posted:So as a general long term annoyance, my wireless Mouse and Keyboard will randomly misbehave. The mouse will freeze at random intervals. It seems to be happening in a window of time and then go back to working properly. So if I think it's in that window I can shake my mouse back and forth and within a few seconds it will show the freeze as a hiccup. It also affects the mouseclick sometimes, giving the "Mouse Down" signal but not the "Mouse Up" so it will act like I'm drag selecting something. I don't know if this is going to help you, but I had this problem with a Bluetooth keyboard and receiver. The solution was to change USB ports around a bunch, sprinkle the blood of a newly slain rooster on my PC, and go into the Device Manager (could NOT do this within the accompanying software) and tell Windows to let the dongle run at higher power, and not turn the damned thing off to save energy. First thing I'd do, though is to shorten the distance between the transceiver and your devices as much as you can.
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Jan 25, 2015 10:44
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Ape Agitator posted:It's really hard to tell if this is a placebo effect but I'm moving the usb dongle to within inches of the keyboard. So far it's been okay so fingers crossed. This was an option specifically for my bluetooth dongle, and doesn't appear to be available for the Logitech Unified Receiver dealie. fake e: now that I'm actually looking for it, I can't even find that as an option, but I'm sure it existed at some point. Somewhere. At any rate, it's probably specific to this peripheral.
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Jan 26, 2015 07:57
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doctorfrog posted:Thanks for the reply. My use case is that I'm just some dude with digital stuff of pretty high personal value, but also work product for various companies, some big, some small. I mostly don't want douches who would steal a drive to be able to see my stuff. Or use the drive at all, the bastards. But it would be even better if it were not hackable by anyone, ever. Bringing this old query of mine back, it looks like my concerns were more or less valid: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/02/how-hackers-could-attack-hard-drives-to-create-a-pervasive-backdoor/ Welp, back to TrueCrypt. I still don't have a single bit that the NSA or anyone else is interested in, but why not be as secure as possible? (Or at least as secure as a unsophisticated nobody can be?) edit: quote:So, in theory, if an attacker was able to use another exploit to gain remote access to a machine and identify the hard drive on the system, they could then drop a customized installer onto the victim system that installs modified drive controller code that gives them a persistent backdoor. The problem, of course, is having a custom set of ROM code for precisely the hard drives that are on the targeted systems—a bit of work that would quickly elevate the cost of development of the attack to something attainable only by an organization with deep technical skill and deep pockets, or a relationship with someone willing to pay for it. doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Feb 20, 2015 |
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Feb 20, 2015 20:33
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politicorific posted:I put together my PC and installed windows 8.1, let it run for about a day and then finally got around to installing the latest nvidia drivers. Suddenly all text looks terrible: blurry, stretched, and not nearly as sharp as before. Dumb question: are you at your monitor's native resolution?
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Apr 3, 2015 19:09
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Rexxed posted:That said, I've had very good luck with the 2.5" portable Seagate disks. Not all of their products are built to deceive you into thinking that they're okay when they're not, but some certainly are. My experience isn't as extensive, but I avoid Seagates for similar reasons. I have an 800MB 2.5" external drive from 2010, which ran like a dream for a couple years, then examining it with Crystal Disk Info revealed that it was slowly using up its Reallocated Sectors, and threw a yellow caution. I ran Seagate's test thing (quick and long tests) so I could return it, and it passes with flying colors. So I have to either use the drive until it's so bad it doesn't even pass Seagate's test (and under warranty), or relegate it to storing things I don't care about. I didn't bother with either. Two other internal Seagate drives failed while out of warranty, but within a 2-3 year service time, and one didn't. Also, every external 2.5" Seagate drive I've had never shuts off when the PC shuts off. Motor just keeps running. They have to be disconnected. That's stupid. Every other drive I've had has been a Western Digital (I'm not brand-loyal, just turns out that way when it comes to shopping), and out of maybe 10-15 drives in the last decade in a half, only one has failed. This is all anecdotal, of course, I hardly have used up enough drives to make a decent sample.
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Apr 14, 2015 18:20
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cisco privilege posted:There's actually a Seagate RMA code that's just "this drive isn't erroring but I'm confident it's dying" that will let you return it, unless they removed the code or something. I've done this in the past and just tossed in a CDI printout with the bad sector codes highlighted. Yep, and that's why my anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, because I completely missed that totally reasonable thing. 
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Apr 14, 2015 18:52
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Alereon posted:Just make sure any drive you get is USB 3.0 and has an AC adapter, USB-powered drives tend not to work too well.
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May 11, 2015 08:44
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Alereon posted:They draw either exactly or somewhat more than the maximum amount of power allowed under USB 2.0, so whether they get enough power to work depends on the system. It's less important since USB 3.0 provides more power, but it's still better to get one that comes with an AC adapter so you don't have to worry about it. Interesting. I use a 2.5" USB 3.0 1TB WD drive as a primary backup, so that's a bit concerning. I have secondaries, but still. I guess it would be a good idea to get a powered USB 3.0 hub? My PC's power supply is decent, and only about 1.5 years old.
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May 12, 2015 08:35
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Fast am-I-stupid question: Combination of Windows (8.1) and HP Stream 11 laptop. I refreshed the device to clear all the crap out of it and sort of 'start over' and it worked great a couple days. I worked with it a bit two days ago half in the sun/shade (about an 80 degree day), and it got kinda noticably warm after about 10-15 minutes of use. So was I anyway, and so I took it back to my air conditioned office. I used it another full day, no issues. Today I took it to my cool home and let it update the jack jumpin hell out of itself (Windows 8.1 updates all over again), come back home after lunch and suddenly the backlight doesn't work. If I shine a flashlight into the screen I can see brighter imagery in the murk, so it isn't an issue with the device trying to output an image to a projector that isn't there or something. I was thinking maybe it's some setting in the BIOS or in Windows that got flipped and now it doesn't trigger the backlight at first, but after additional thought, maybe I baked the little bastard and it just took a couple more days to kill itself. How screwed do you suppose I am here, and what are my options.
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Jul 24, 2016 02:38
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tuyop posted:Have you tried booting into another OS using like an Ubuntu liveUSB or just the installation media for the laptop to rule out software? I'm going to try this next, but I'm not very confident. It's an HP, so the restore is on a separate partition, and I've already tried wiping the OS partition and reinstalling that from the restore partition, having to shine a flashlight into it the whole time. Even accessing the BIOS screen for boot options and whatnot won't light it up. I'm guessing that Linux won't fare any better, but I guess we'll see. edit: yep, no worky. Linux Mint live boots up just fine, no backlight. Bightness control shows in the gloom and does nothing. Am I boned? Next steps? doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Jul 24, 2016 |
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Jul 24, 2016 03:07
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tuyop posted:Someone's going to recommend googling your laptop model number + backlight or screen repair. You've read my mind. I'm not handy, and it was a $200 laptop, 1.5 years old, and it was only ever my satellite machine. Maybe I'll connect an external hard drive to it and have it be a headless media server. Time to find a new cheapie.
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Jul 24, 2016 06:14
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Is this what they call outsider art?
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Oct 28, 2016 07:10
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I had a similar issue and it turned out to be Windows Update constantly waking my computer up, and keeping it awake. Had nothing to do with a power button. This isn't saying that you have the exact same problem, but I'd start by trying to disable wake timers. You could also "catch" the computer as it wakes and quickly run powercfg -requests and see if anything shows there.
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Feb 10, 2022 19:34
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I'm looking for a cheap USB sound card to replace the old no-name I've been using with my headphones. I've just noticed that very quiet sounds have a little fuzz around them, like how old video game cinematics would fade out and the sound would get a little crackly as the volume went down. I've ruled out line noise and issues with the source sounds, this is something that only happens with this USB device, which is around 8 years old. I'm looking at a cheap Sound blaster Play 3 on Amazon for around 20 bucks. Recently I replaced a 10 year old Bluetooth dongle and the new one is way better, maybe I'll have a similar experience with a USB sound card?
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Sep 3, 2022 19:03
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Criss-cross posted:Just don't install the driver and you're golden. If you're in Europe, get a Sharkoon Gaming DAC Pro S. Thanks. I'm in the US and the Sound Blaster is at $18, about what I'm looking to spend. infraboy posted:I feel like a total boomer now but I was using cheap headsets from Amazon for years which were serviceable. Bought an ANC wireless headset and now I feel like it’s one of the greatest things ever being able to mostly mute out the household sounds. I feel like these have existed for a while and I just never thought about it until I realized I needed it. Yeah, budget constraints have me at "serviceable" at this time too, and hopefully an under $20 expenditure will give me a little happiness bump. I'm used to most of my household noises (apartment life with a family and birds) or I'd go mad whatever the technology. Most of my headphone listening is late at night, so USB sound card married to cheapie headphones will do  .
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Sep 3, 2022 21:20
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Using an alternative file manager that doesn't try to generate thumbnails of every file might help. E:fb
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Jun 20, 2023 21:41
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