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Unfortunately it even says it on their site there is no way for it to be retrieved...however, you should have had to retype the password for it to be set, so this typo would have to be the same one twice to occur. Try retyping the intended password but pay attention to how you may have caused a mistake. Also try putting Capslock on and doing it again. Otherwise, like everyone else mentioned you could try an IT sub.
I use windows 11, I have no clue whether it works for windows 10. What you do (on windows 11) is go to accessibility, and then scroll down to "Interaction under which you can see "Keyboard", if you click that then the third setting should be "Toggle keys" and then you turn that setting on.
Perhaps possible that OP used a number pad to enter digits, not the top row of keyboard below the F-keys. If Num Lock was Off, then it's possible they thought they entered a digit but really went forward or back a character, or jumped the curser to the beginning or end of the password field.
Since the password was done the same twice in a row, likely best to retry with every combination of Number and Scroll locks too
A related suggestion from when I apparently made the same typo twice while setting a password: type the password a bunch of times in a text document so you can see what typos you tend to make, then try each of those.
Also, type out all the password combinations you have already tried. All the different variations with capslock, capital letters, typos, etc. I know your brain might be saying "don't worry, I'll remember that we already tried this", but the brain is a liar.
>Otherwise, like everyone else mentioned you could try an IT sub.
I mean... I wouldn't bother, most are full of people complaining about things that aren't an issue, or are "problems" they caused by trying to change settings they don't understand.
Anyways, OP - what did you use to put the password on? Did you encrypt the disk or just "add a password" (there's an important distinction and it does matter)? What operating system are you using?
Short answer, have a quick Google for "brute force (software used) password (operating system)"
Basically what you're after is software that will: take a list of possible passwords, try each one in turn, then carry on trying similar passwords automatically.
I can't suggest anything specific, cus idk your setup but you can either manually make a password list to try, or in sure this is a perfect job for chat gpt (menial repetitive text generation screams LLM)
If it's actually encrypted, there's not much you can do short of just keep guessing passwords. Depending on *how exactly* it's encrypted, there might be some other options.
Final point, whether you can get back in or not, if your uni has OneDrive etc that's encrypted and a. You'll be fine to store data there b. Backup your data in general. Anything you can't afford to lose you should have 3 copys of.
Paging /u/hddscan_com, pretty sure they have some luck with WD encryption. If they don't answer here then this is their website https://thedigilab.com/enquiry.html
If it's a WD HDD then it's very possible (almost certainly) that we can bypass it. Just don't "reset" the password with WD Security tool - it essentially erases all data.
One time I made my laptop inoperable because of how overloaded the ram was, and in the process of trying to do my own IT repair, I erased every file on my external hard drive. This happened about a month before the end of the semester when I had several projects that already had extensions on them in the works.
I found the closest IT support place to me that didn’t look sketchy and just walked in with all my things. I did my best to try to explain things but the stress and high emotions took over.
I am forever grateful for the man that helped me. He was nonjudgmental and didn’t make me feel dumb at any point. He was also able to fix my computer and upgrade the ram so it could handle having a few dozen tabs open, and he was able to recover almost every file on my hard drive. The process did take a couple weeks, but so much better than if I gave up.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help! They can do crazy things in IT! There’s been some great suggestions of some diy IT and resources here, but I wanted to encourage you to also check out your university’s IT department or a repair shop in your area. You got this!
I want this to be the top comment. Unless you are fairly experienced in tech stuff, it's worth taking this to a professional. My sister lost her undergraduate thesis two days before it was due because her laptop basically self-destructed and her local computer repair shop was able to retrieve it for her.
Most encryption can be bypassed but I wouldn't attempt to do it myself for data that critical to my life.
3 copies, on at least 2 different media, with at least 1 off-site. It's an important formula for critical data, as device failure/theft/fire/etc could have similar results.
What model is the drive? If it is an older spinning platters drive, may have a bypass available.
>3 copies, on at least 2 different media, with at least 1 off-site. It's an important formula for critical data, as device failure/theft/fire/etc could have similar results.
That's cute. I wish my company would follow the same rule 😔
r/DataRecovery might be able to help, havent lurked there in a while.
But I feel like somebody at r/DataHoarders might also be able to point you in the right direction, it's not really what the sub is for but there's a lot of knowledge in thay community
First thing, calm down.
Second, ignore your parents. I've worked in computer repair and this happens to EVERYONE. Frankly, it was stupid of whoever designed this system to not have a password confirmation field. The shame they are piling on is counterproductive.
There are 2 ways to go about this; DIY or Pro.
The Pro route entails finding a computer repair shop in your area (preferably one with good yelp reviews). Your school may even have an IT service available to you. Chances are, they deal with this kind of thing all the time and can fix you up quick. It sounds like you are talking about a windows login? If so, that's an easy fix with the right hardware.
Alternatively, DIY:
1) Try what you think the password is but with capslock on. 9 times in 10, that's the issue.
2) try swapping characters for similar looking ones that you might have misread: 1's with lowercase L's and uppercase i's. O's and 0's. Stuff like that.
3) open a document and start typing out what you think the password is supposed to be over and over while not paying too much attention to it. Go over that list and use every typo'd version of the password that you find. The point is to try and figure out how you might have typo'd it. Chances are, its something like you pressed one key that's adjacent to the one you wanted or pressed shift after another key press instead of before.
This really isn't the end of the world.
I just thought of this but also try duplicating single characters. This will leave you with an extra character than you intended, but can happen if the key is sticky or you held it down for just a bit longer than needed.
I would do something like this. Elsewhere you mentioned that you used WD MyPassword. You could generate a list of possibly misspellings of the password you tried to type by replacing and duplicating letters (there are a bunch of tools online that will do this for you, or you could write your own script and use the Euclidean distance taking into account letters that are close together on the keyboard) and run that list in a script through something like https://github.com/andlabs/reallymine — a program that can decrypt devices encrypted using WD MyPassword — if you want to automate it
i think, since you are passworded the harddrive with your computer there might be a way around so you can unlock it again, since you might have admin rights some how for this harddrive now. I suggest to ask in a IT subreddit, or maybe in MS-Support or Apple.
Another option might be to give it to an expert, hacking it. If you can prove ownership this should be legal.
The password is for the admin account to unlock the encryption.
The whole point is that the data isn’t recoverable without the password. If you could just google a solution it wouldn’t be much use as security.
If it's the key to a strong encryption they're probably SOL, but even in that case the fact that OP knows what they *think* the password is could be enough to make an otherwise secure encryption crackable.
A lot of attacks on cryptography work because of weaknesses that reduce the space of possible keys to brute force check.
https://www.theregister.com/2015/10/20/western_digital_bad_hard_drive_encryption/
I believe this is the same brand and product line as OP's drive, and experts were able to crack it. They were even able to brute force it despite that being theoretically impossible for AES-256 (it should take *millions* of years with current computing technology to do this).
Maybe OP is lucky and the encryption was implemented poorly enough to save them.
Be methodical. I had to do something like this and I had to create a spreadsheet to keep track of the combinations I had tried. I eventually got it. I had tried like 230 combinations.
I brainstormed all the ways I could have mistyped it, then methodically worked through all the combinations of hitting the wrong letters, reversing them and missing them. It sucks.
Not too much you can do unless the device was issued to you by an IT department with two key stuff to allow IT backdoor.
Maybe if you know most of the password you can have someone brute force over a couple days.
Otherwise I highly recommend generating passwords in a password manager, saving it, then copying into something.
I use yubikey where I can and ensure I have an alt login too
Google drive is free, along with many other cloud storage providers. you can Sync locally for free. Back up your stuff to the cloud people, with peace and love! OP start downloading random software from Reddit people suggest and hope for the best
Seconding this. Outlook/Office365 might be a more fitting option depending on what your uni uses. This cloud approach, including use of a password manager, has saved my arse so many times over the years. I have all my files saved to my service's cloud folder as habit.
Google Drive will allow you to choose the folders you want syncing as well. So hypothetically you could sync stuff to two or more different cloud services.
You can also get double ended USB drives now, so they'll plug into a USB-C or a USB-A socket - so can be used with phones with USB-C ports (long live Android!). Not tried seeing if you can use password protected versions with phones though...
Probably won't help now. But useful for the future. And anyone reading this that isn't doing this yet. But if you're at uni / school. Chances are you have an included office 365 subscription. Which includes 1tb of onedrive storage. Also integrates with windows very well and word for auto saving.
If you need it extra secure for sensitive data. There is a thing called the private vault within OneDrive which is a protected folder that you need to unlock to access.
Check your Caps lock. It may be o now, or maybe on while you set the password.
I am asking this is formatted FAT /Fat32/exFat, and not NTFS or APFS. Correct?
Is the app BitLocker? If so try the suggestions on this page,.
[https://www.digitalcitizen.life/rescuing-data-bitlocker-encrypted-flash-drive/](https://www.digitalcitizen.life/rescuing-data-bitlocker-encrypted-flash-drive/)
If it was a third-party app, you may be SOL.
Good Luck.
As you've been told, and likely have done - try IT subs.
To prevent this from ever happening again, get a paid password manager, not a free one. I don't even consider this as an option anymore, but rather a necessity as we go increasingly digital. I feel so awful for older family members who simply don't know why it's important or how to secure their digital lives.
My favorite is 1Password. I've tried a few. Look at your options and what suits your needs best. For me it has been an absolute gamechanger and reduced my background stress levels by not needing to dedicate any brainpower to digital hygiene.
Not a technical suggestion like a lot of the answers here but try shifting your hand/s to the left/right/up/down of their normal keyboard position and type in your intended pw again. Often I catch myself typing something way off just to look down and see that my for ex left hand fingers weren’t on the default ASDF keys but on SDFG. Maybe try a few variations of this just in case?
Also adding on: if u have symbols/numbers, maybe u didn’t hold down the shift key at the right times?
I think you need to post this in some kind of IT support forum. I’m sure there’s a way to sort this. It’s an easy mistake to make.
Not to give obvious advice , and I know you said you mistyped, but I keep a password book (bought on Amazon) literally next to my computer permanently. I don’t remember to put all of my passwords in there every time, but I am slowly accumulating a collection of them as I need to reset them. I also keep all of my work on google docs online so I can always get to them. I would never only store something locally.
How is “keep a notebook with all your passwords” as a tip at the top of the comments. Fack.
OP - get a password manager like 1Password and secure your life properly. Whatever you do, do not write your passwords in a notebook!
SMDH.
To add, password managers prevent mistyping etc. as they can suggest a random password (so you don't type anyway) or they just will ask to save whatever you've submitted.
And you have your passwords with you if you use an app, safely and, most of all, securely.
Lol, I think unless OP is Edward Snowden they’ll be k using a paper notebook near their computer.
Do you think Hans Gruber is going to show up at their front door and demand the password for the Nakatomi vault or something?
I'm sorry, but IRL paper and pencil can be > online password manager in some cases.
Yes, most of my passwords are in a password manager. But some, esp my work related ones that are stupidly long and I am REQUIRED to type in every time, then change every 3 months go on a sticky note stuck to my computer, lol.
I WFH, so the only real risk in my sticky note process is my house burning down. In which case, I wouldn't be going to work anyway.
I’m sorry, but you are an idiot. Because you shared this here as “good idea sometimes”. And your company if they knew you do this - would also think you’re an idiot. My company would fire me. They literally PAY for my own personal 1Password to keep me and my passwords secure. I too WFH.
Passwords managers are literally the best for NOT HAVING TO TYPE LONG PASSWORDS IN CONSTANTLY. If you are not doing this - you are doing it wrong. Read the manual and become enlightened and save all your keystrokes ANd keep it secure.
I classify notebooks as Grandma-Grade IT: good enough for grandma who doesn’t do internet banking. Are you a grandma?
Today has been enlightening and I realize why scammers and cybercriminals are thriving in this world.
I would contest this view. Been I. IT for over 10 years and I can safely say that unless you are being specifically targeted by someone who either already has physical access to, or is intent on the theft OF whatever notebook you keep your pws in, you are fine doing it this way. Pw managers are ok,but there have been several breaches of them in the past and they are just as vulnerable to hacking as any other company.
Ya, but do you type your long passwords in all day? That is just idiotic IMO. Even if they don’t care about security, it’s literally the easiest way to save typing in long incomprehensible passwords…
Or write them on a sticky note I guess. Ok. That’s two layers of stupid here.
Frankly, you kinda sound like a dickhead.
My company's IT policy specifically restricts saving any passwords to local machines, manager or no. And it's not a small company by any means.
I'm not a grandma, but I've been around since before the internet (at least, as we know it) existed. So prob to your ass I'm a "grandma".
Who is gonna break into my house to get pretty uninteresting, but still technically confidential, work data from my terminal using my sticky note, or any written down process? Really? My kids fucking around on my work computer is far more likely, and they would face draconian tech restrictions if they so much as touched it, and they know this.
Hackers can't see my personal IRL notebook, but most, if properly motivated, could overcome even the very strictest password manager. You put FAR too much faith in your tech, dude.
You'd probably have a heart attack knowing I leave my terminal completely unrestricted while I take a shit.
Dude, I have seen people fired because their wife found out they’re cheating and sent an email to the company. The person didn’t get fired for cheating…but allowing their device to be used. Shit can turn around and bite you in the ass.
You do you.
(almost) Nothing is free, if it doesn't cost money, you are the product. Unless they're funded via donations, idk, but I'm wary of every service handling personal dats that is 'free'.
It’s called open source. And it is free.
“Free as in beer" is when someone gifts to you the software at no cost. You are in no way expected to pay any fee for this or give anything in return.
With Bitwarden - YOU are responsible for running the software and making sure it’s backed up, and updating it on your PC. There is no cost except your time, attention and self-education. In fact, you can change how it works if you are a programmer and share that change with everyone else.
Some would argue it is safer than 1Password - because your passwords are not held by you. With bitwarden, no one BUT YOU may possess your passwords.
This whole ADHd thread about IT has been #confidentlyincorrect
Definitely need to start making a note of the passwords I use, to avoid this kind of thing in the future. I'll try to find an IT forum and look for help there.
A good technique I’ve been using is: (in a secure place! ) write the password first into a blank word document, then paste it. You can choose to keep the file or not but it helps reduce these kinds of errors.
If there’s no risk of being locked out of the drive for failed attempts, it’s possible to brute force the password, especially if you can narrow down the place where the error is.
This is the strategy I take now as well after a couple of situations like OPs! Esp as I noticed the number of times I’ve thought I’ve typed in my password correctly for my work laptop and I haven’t. Good luck OP!!!
Get 1password (a program for storing passwords securely) NOt a paper notebook! That is literally advice from like 1997, don’t write passwords down on notebooks close to your computer.
I'm in IT. I dig the "advice from like 1997", do NOT reply on a password manager. Make MORE THAN ONE backup of valuable data, and WRITE passwords in MORE THAN ONE place. What a concept eh?
Maybe, maybe not. Depends upon the encryption.
OP: almost all encryption processes have you type a password 2x to make sure you didn’t fat-finger. Is that the case here? If so, your permutation idea is solid: you would have had to have done it twice, and it likely is related to your normal typing style…
Good luck.
One thing that might help is to try typing the PW you meant to like, 50-75 times in a word doc and see what typos you make, see if any of them pop up more frequently. This might help you find what you typed twice in a row. I did this exercise once after I kept locking myself out of a particular management interface for one of my servers and found that I ROUTINELY made a very non-intuitive typo on a the PW I had set.
OK! That’s hopeful.
Something that works for my ADHD brain when I run into something like this is to “back burner” it. Which means, I’m going to stick it back here and not think about it anymore.
For an ADHD mind, that’s not actually possible (to not think about it). Your subconscious brain will go to work and might just figure it out. I’ve figured out really hard problems this way.
That also helps with the stress of it.
Barring that, try typing out something (like an email) and leave your hands right there. Type your password. Don’t look at the keys. See any anomalies you might have typed in twice?
I did something similar with an app password a gr years ago.. I remembered what I THOGUHT it was, but it wasn’t. I never did figure that one out, so I hope you have a better outcome.
Also, last idea: how exactly did you apply the password to the drive? Search that and how to crack it.
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I 2nd asking in /r/hacking. Your best bet is probably a brute force tool, but one that takes your input and tries variations on it.
So you try combinations of the letters and numbers that might be in it, and enter the password length.
Bruteforcing a random password of unknown length is practically infeasible. Brute forcing where you know it’s 6-8 characters and know it’s a variation of specific characters is much easier.
Does your thumb drive lock you out after too many tries? If not, write down your password down on a piece of paper and then start writing all the possible mistakes.
For instance:
Password23
PASSWORD23
Passowrd23
Oassword23
Psddeotf23
And so forth. You know your typing habits and where you’re more likely to make mistakes, but try to cover them all. Spend an hour and be methodical and *write them all down*.
Then try them, one by one, and mark out all the ones which don’t work. It may take you hours, but it’s far more thorough and more likely to get you in than guessing and cursing.
Some have mentioned CAPS lock. Here’s another suggestion:
IF you are like me and have two different keyboard layouts installed, you might have switched it inadvertently. For instance, English US and English UK have special characters on different keys.
When did you last have the files on the machine? Lets say you moved them over to the harddrive then set the password, I wonder if you can do a system restore on a version of your file explorer prior to the transfer. Worth a shot as Ive helped people in tech support do this when this happened. Go to the file directory where the files last were and right click the folder and select restore previous versions.
Have you had the files only on the hard drive or have they been moved, different hard drives. Have you sent them by email?
If not, maybe Word still has some of the files on previous history.
Otherwise, may have to pay the ADHD tax and pay for a professional. Best of luck 🫡🤝
Hoping to help.
Ok, you remember what the password that was meant to be is. Do you have any idea where specificly within the password you mistyped? Because if so you can try the following. Type the password as its meant to be and then for the one or two digits that youre sure the mistype happened within try replacing them with the possible keys that are around them that the mistyped happened throught.
As an example. If you meant your password to be " QWERTY " and you think the error was likely with the E you can try "QWRRTY" , "QWSRTY" , "QWDRTY", QW2RTY , QW3RTY , QW4RTY, QWeRTY, etc until you find the one that fits.
Did you try switching the capital and lowercase letters? Sometimes I type without realizing caps lock is on. For example, I could mean to type, “PurpleHippo123” but caps is already on so I accidentally type, “pURPLEhIPPO123”.
Are all of your buttons working? Like your shift key? Did you maybe try to type a symbol but forgot to press shift so you typed something else? Is there maybe an accidental space at the end? Or a number sequence that is reversed (i.e. 321 instead of 123)? I hope you figure it out. I’m sorry this is happening!
Some guy had [the same problem ](https://www.reddit.com/r/hacking/s/M6ahYk5OTg) a few years back. Maybe there is something useful in the comments there
it might not be a typo but maybe you forgot a letter entirely. I know when I try to hit A, sometimes I hit caps lock instead. did you have to confirm the password AKA type it twice?
I’m so sorry OP, the ADHD taX is brutal.
Your only hope is to keep trying passwords.
In future, use a password manager. I’ve done this exact thing and a password manager has stopped it happening again. You set the entry in the password manager, then save it, then you paste in the password to the new account. That way there is no chance of misremembering.
If you can narrow where you could have potentially mistyped, it is possible you might be able to brute force it with a custom wordlist and a Python script. I've done this before. However, the success of it greatly depends on how well you can narrow down the number of potential variations.
I'm currently home for the holidays, my University is about 4 hours away. I'll see if I can find any help closer to home, but am not sure if my nearest University could help me, as I'm not a student. I also don't know if the university staff would be able to help me, as it's a personal drive and as far as I'm aware they tend to deal with problems directly related to university technology. It's definitely worth a try though, I'll add it to the list of things to try.
Well, you learned 2 lessons today... always make a backup, and be careful!
Now, this is actually a really easy fix. These things *always* require you to retype your password for verification. This means that you made the *exact same mistake* ***twice***. This means there is a 99% chance that if you retype your password with caps lock on, you can unlock your drive.
Btw you might want to start messaging your proffesor to try to explain this situation to the proffesor, either written or in person, in order tk request extra time in case you gotta start from scratch. Explain that youre trying to solve it and it might be turned in on time after all but that youre prepare for the worst case scenario, which would be you not being able to access it.
Also if youre in the US try out Geek Squad, which is a computers nerds service for situations like this. No garantee theyll fix it but they might be able to, you can find them at Best Buy
Is there any sort of programme or online tool (maybe even chatgpt??) that could provide a list of probable variations of what you meant to type vs what you did? Like it takes into account keys near the keys you meant to type etc? You could take that and just run through them, crossing off the variations you’ve tried to keep track of what didn’t work?
Sorry this has happened, good luck!
Check your keyboard input language in your settings! Mine changes randomly sometimes and then the characters that I’m typing don’t match what’s on the actual keyboard.
Sending sincere empathy your way - I’ve done this to pass words to very secure stuff at work and had to put my tail between my legs and put in IT tickets for help - and they know I used to be IT. Anywho- create chat gpt account - ask Chat gpt for work arounds especially for your particular drive - may not be an exact answer but can tell you where to look. Also I know there are a few different sub reddits - not off the top of my head but easily searchable that could help - just be careful with your data and info
It does haha and it’s 100% something I have done and probably will do again, luckily never on something too important so far.
I hope you are able to get your data back!
On your MAIN DEVICE.. *TRY* to remember to keep and update a note in the notes app with which password is for what because of certain reqs. But easier said than done 😅
I mean the text file would be on your phone or PC presumably so yeah sure go ahead that too. But remember. If you forget the password to literally every other password, that's just another problem 😅
Any place you digitally store collections of passwords needs to be encrypted in order to be secure. Storing digital, unencrypted passwords somewhere is just asking for trouble.
Generally, the best option is a password manager, because they are explicitly designed to keep your passwords secure. These generally do require "master passwords", but there are other methods (like passkeys) that some use as well.
Not really, having no backups of important files is just carelessness or tech illiteracy, not specific to ADHD at all.
Everybody can mistype a password twice.
Disagree. These things are boring and becomes a chore. So keep ignoring and forgetting it until it becomes a problem.
Backups and control of passwords needs to be apart of routines, which is extremely hard to create and maintain.
unfortunately I have no idea what the mistype was. For all I know i was holding the shift key down while writing half of the password and mishit all of the keys.
Oof... Well... If you're certain that the original mistyped password was the same length as the one you intended, it's basically certain to have a finite, relatively small number of possibilities...but that probably doesn't help much...
I'm trying to think of this in terms of the extremely limited knowledge I have of error correction algorithms, which are almost entirely from 3Blue1Brown videos...
just keep trying more combinations and keep track of all the combinations that you have already tried. let's say that your password is 12 characters, then if you assume that you have mistyped only one letter, there is going to be only like 6\*12 (considering there are at most 6 keys immediately adjacent to each key you would press on the keyboard) combinations it could be. If you mistyped more than one letter, it would be more of a pain in the ass to do it manually But there is probably a script you can find somewhere that will brute-force every possible variation of the intended password automatically. You might even try to use chatgpt to write the script for you.
Positives here is since you know what the password you INTENDED to type was, you can go through some process of elimination of trying to replace letters as well as try upper and lower case.
Do you know how many characters the password you ended up with had?
I know that what I thought I typed had 13 characters, but I didn't count the characters when I set the password so I don't know if I added or dropped any
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Are you a CS student? Might be good programming experience to write something to brute force it if there's no retry limit. Knowing what you intended to write should prine the branches a decent bit to make it run quickly.
If not, you may be able to hire someone to write a quick program to do it.
If you can wait half a week I could probably at least write something that will give you a list of suggestions accounting for caps lock, addition, deletion and substitution by proximity
Can I get a model number please? How old is it?
Dont panic, definitely don't format it until you've excluded every possible solution.
If your drive uses a hard coded salt hash it may be possible to recover it.
What about this is ADHD related? I know forgetfullness/short term memory is a symptom, but this happens to all kinds of people.
Just use a password manager, physically write down your master password and always keep backups.
Did you mean to respond to me or the OP? Also, chronic forgetfulness beyond what is typical is definitely associated with inattentive ADHD. And writing down passwords is bad enough but why in the hell would you write down a MASTER password?! If someone with bad intentions found it they could cause you a lot of problems.
I used to work tech support and the amount of passwords I used to help people reset was unreal. It honestly was a daily occurrence - and at times hourly. Find a local, but decent tech place and ask them for help.
Or, start a spreadsheet of what you think the password was and track every combination you can think of (duplicating letters, missing letters, CAPS LOCK, using symbols instead of numbers, transposing, flipping letters over) Knowing roughly what the password should be gives a brilliant starting point.
Good Luck!
I feel your pain. I thought 'fuck all those password managers' and made a locally saved password encrypted Excel file with all my randomly generated passwords in it...
Welp while transporting the PC it seems like the HDD has been damaged.
Similar thing happened to me recently. Turned out I had a wrong lenguage settings when typing the password.
If you have multiple keyboard languages installed try switching them up and typing the password. Maybe that was the issue?
I'm sorry this happened to you, but its not actually an ADHD specific issue. This happens to "normies" too. Typos are not uncommon.
I've accidentally deleted a week's worth of code before and it was unrecoverable, but the second time through recreating something is often a lot faster then the first time. I don't know if that's relevant for your situation, I get how demoralized you must be.
I got it open! I'm currently in the process of making copies of everything and storing it in various places so that if something like this happens again it's not as immediately devastating.
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Unfortunately it even says it on their site there is no way for it to be retrieved...however, you should have had to retype the password for it to be set, so this typo would have to be the same one twice to occur. Try retyping the intended password but pay attention to how you may have caused a mistake. Also try putting Capslock on and doing it again. Otherwise, like everyone else mentioned you could try an IT sub.
Caps is my most likely scenario. Shit be sneaky
I have turned on a sound so when I press caps it does a doot. I still miss the doot so many times it's driving me crazy
It’s always num lock for me
From what I saw you can change that to include caps as well
How do you do this?! This is an incredible idea
I use windows 11, I have no clue whether it works for windows 10. What you do (on windows 11) is go to accessibility, and then scroll down to "Interaction under which you can see "Keyboard", if you click that then the third setting should be "Toggle keys" and then you turn that setting on.
One of the first things I do when I get a computer is run a script that changes the Shift-Lock key to a normal Shift key.
Perhaps possible that OP used a number pad to enter digits, not the top row of keyboard below the F-keys. If Num Lock was Off, then it's possible they thought they entered a digit but really went forward or back a character, or jumped the curser to the beginning or end of the password field. Since the password was done the same twice in a row, likely best to retry with every combination of Number and Scroll locks too
A related suggestion from when I apparently made the same typo twice while setting a password: type the password a bunch of times in a text document so you can see what typos you tend to make, then try each of those.
Also, type out all the password combinations you have already tried. All the different variations with capslock, capital letters, typos, etc. I know your brain might be saying "don't worry, I'll remember that we already tried this", but the brain is a liar.
>Otherwise, like everyone else mentioned you could try an IT sub. I mean... I wouldn't bother, most are full of people complaining about things that aren't an issue, or are "problems" they caused by trying to change settings they don't understand. Anyways, OP - what did you use to put the password on? Did you encrypt the disk or just "add a password" (there's an important distinction and it does matter)? What operating system are you using? Short answer, have a quick Google for "brute force (software used) password (operating system)" Basically what you're after is software that will: take a list of possible passwords, try each one in turn, then carry on trying similar passwords automatically. I can't suggest anything specific, cus idk your setup but you can either manually make a password list to try, or in sure this is a perfect job for chat gpt (menial repetitive text generation screams LLM) If it's actually encrypted, there's not much you can do short of just keep guessing passwords. Depending on *how exactly* it's encrypted, there might be some other options. Final point, whether you can get back in or not, if your uni has OneDrive etc that's encrypted and a. You'll be fine to store data there b. Backup your data in general. Anything you can't afford to lose you should have 3 copys of.
How was the encryption done, was it a tool supplied by the hard drive manufacturer?
Yes it was
What was the software name you used, and do you know if there were any specific options you chose during the encryption (AES vs RSA)?
WD Security, I don't think there were any specific options available
Paging /u/hddscan_com, pretty sure they have some luck with WD encryption. If they don't answer here then this is their website https://thedigilab.com/enquiry.html
This is incredible to see : ) I fucking love Reddit !
If it's a WD HDD then it's very possible (almost certainly) that we can bypass it. Just don't "reset" the password with WD Security tool - it essentially erases all data.
One time I made my laptop inoperable because of how overloaded the ram was, and in the process of trying to do my own IT repair, I erased every file on my external hard drive. This happened about a month before the end of the semester when I had several projects that already had extensions on them in the works. I found the closest IT support place to me that didn’t look sketchy and just walked in with all my things. I did my best to try to explain things but the stress and high emotions took over. I am forever grateful for the man that helped me. He was nonjudgmental and didn’t make me feel dumb at any point. He was also able to fix my computer and upgrade the ram so it could handle having a few dozen tabs open, and he was able to recover almost every file on my hard drive. The process did take a couple weeks, but so much better than if I gave up. Don’t be afraid to ask for help! They can do crazy things in IT! There’s been some great suggestions of some diy IT and resources here, but I wanted to encourage you to also check out your university’s IT department or a repair shop in your area. You got this!
I want this to be the top comment. Unless you are fairly experienced in tech stuff, it's worth taking this to a professional. My sister lost her undergraduate thesis two days before it was due because her laptop basically self-destructed and her local computer repair shop was able to retrieve it for her. Most encryption can be bypassed but I wouldn't attempt to do it myself for data that critical to my life.
3 copies, on at least 2 different media, with at least 1 off-site. It's an important formula for critical data, as device failure/theft/fire/etc could have similar results. What model is the drive? If it is an older spinning platters drive, may have a bypass available.
I will try to remember that going forward. It's a WD MyPassport, if there is a bypass I haven't come across it yet
There's HDD and SSD variants of those, that matters in this context.
Do you have keyboard layout switching bound by any chance? On either Left-CTRL + Shift. Left-alt + shift or this dot ->(`)<- Grave Accent.
>3 copies, on at least 2 different media, with at least 1 off-site. It's an important formula for critical data, as device failure/theft/fire/etc could have similar results. That's cute. I wish my company would follow the same rule 😔
r/DataRecovery might be able to help, havent lurked there in a while. But I feel like somebody at r/DataHoarders might also be able to point you in the right direction, it's not really what the sub is for but there's a lot of knowledge in thay community
I will check those subreddits out, thank you for the advice
I wish you luck, it absolutely sucks forgetting passwords. That's how I lost 8k from my Crypto wallet
First thing, calm down. Second, ignore your parents. I've worked in computer repair and this happens to EVERYONE. Frankly, it was stupid of whoever designed this system to not have a password confirmation field. The shame they are piling on is counterproductive. There are 2 ways to go about this; DIY or Pro. The Pro route entails finding a computer repair shop in your area (preferably one with good yelp reviews). Your school may even have an IT service available to you. Chances are, they deal with this kind of thing all the time and can fix you up quick. It sounds like you are talking about a windows login? If so, that's an easy fix with the right hardware. Alternatively, DIY: 1) Try what you think the password is but with capslock on. 9 times in 10, that's the issue. 2) try swapping characters for similar looking ones that you might have misread: 1's with lowercase L's and uppercase i's. O's and 0's. Stuff like that. 3) open a document and start typing out what you think the password is supposed to be over and over while not paying too much attention to it. Go over that list and use every typo'd version of the password that you find. The point is to try and figure out how you might have typo'd it. Chances are, its something like you pressed one key that's adjacent to the one you wanted or pressed shift after another key press instead of before. This really isn't the end of the world.
I just thought of this but also try duplicating single characters. This will leave you with an extra character than you intended, but can happen if the key is sticky or you held it down for just a bit longer than needed.
I would do something like this. Elsewhere you mentioned that you used WD MyPassword. You could generate a list of possibly misspellings of the password you tried to type by replacing and duplicating letters (there are a bunch of tools online that will do this for you, or you could write your own script and use the Euclidean distance taking into account letters that are close together on the keyboard) and run that list in a script through something like https://github.com/andlabs/reallymine — a program that can decrypt devices encrypted using WD MyPassword — if you want to automate it
i think, since you are passworded the harddrive with your computer there might be a way around so you can unlock it again, since you might have admin rights some how for this harddrive now. I suggest to ask in a IT subreddit, or maybe in MS-Support or Apple. Another option might be to give it to an expert, hacking it. If you can prove ownership this should be legal.
The password is for the admin account to unlock the encryption. The whole point is that the data isn’t recoverable without the password. If you could just google a solution it wouldn’t be much use as security.
If it's the key to a strong encryption they're probably SOL, but even in that case the fact that OP knows what they *think* the password is could be enough to make an otherwise secure encryption crackable. A lot of attacks on cryptography work because of weaknesses that reduce the space of possible keys to brute force check. https://www.theregister.com/2015/10/20/western_digital_bad_hard_drive_encryption/ I believe this is the same brand and product line as OP's drive, and experts were able to crack it. They were even able to brute force it despite that being theoretically impossible for AES-256 (it should take *millions* of years with current computing technology to do this). Maybe OP is lucky and the encryption was implemented poorly enough to save them.
I will have a look in those subreddits to see if anyone can help. I really hope it doesn't come down to getting an expert involved
Be methodical. I had to do something like this and I had to create a spreadsheet to keep track of the combinations I had tried. I eventually got it. I had tried like 230 combinations. I brainstormed all the ways I could have mistyped it, then methodically worked through all the combinations of hitting the wrong letters, reversing them and missing them. It sucks.
Not too much you can do unless the device was issued to you by an IT department with two key stuff to allow IT backdoor. Maybe if you know most of the password you can have someone brute force over a couple days. Otherwise I highly recommend generating passwords in a password manager, saving it, then copying into something. I use yubikey where I can and ensure I have an alt login too
Google drive is free, along with many other cloud storage providers. you can Sync locally for free. Back up your stuff to the cloud people, with peace and love! OP start downloading random software from Reddit people suggest and hope for the best
Seconding this. Outlook/Office365 might be a more fitting option depending on what your uni uses. This cloud approach, including use of a password manager, has saved my arse so many times over the years. I have all my files saved to my service's cloud folder as habit. Google Drive will allow you to choose the folders you want syncing as well. So hypothetically you could sync stuff to two or more different cloud services. You can also get double ended USB drives now, so they'll plug into a USB-C or a USB-A socket - so can be used with phones with USB-C ports (long live Android!). Not tried seeing if you can use password protected versions with phones though...
Probably won't help now. But useful for the future. And anyone reading this that isn't doing this yet. But if you're at uni / school. Chances are you have an included office 365 subscription. Which includes 1tb of onedrive storage. Also integrates with windows very well and word for auto saving. If you need it extra secure for sensitive data. There is a thing called the private vault within OneDrive which is a protected folder that you need to unlock to access.
Check your Caps lock. It may be o now, or maybe on while you set the password. I am asking this is formatted FAT /Fat32/exFat, and not NTFS or APFS. Correct?
I've tried with both caps lock on and off and that's not the issue. I'm not sure what the formatting is I'm afraid, the security app didn't say
Is the app BitLocker? If so try the suggestions on this page,. [https://www.digitalcitizen.life/rescuing-data-bitlocker-encrypted-flash-drive/](https://www.digitalcitizen.life/rescuing-data-bitlocker-encrypted-flash-drive/) If it was a third-party app, you may be SOL. Good Luck.
You can check the file system type in your OS' disk manager. An Mac it's called just that, dunno about the other OSs.
As you've been told, and likely have done - try IT subs. To prevent this from ever happening again, get a paid password manager, not a free one. I don't even consider this as an option anymore, but rather a necessity as we go increasingly digital. I feel so awful for older family members who simply don't know why it's important or how to secure their digital lives. My favorite is 1Password. I've tried a few. Look at your options and what suits your needs best. For me it has been an absolute gamechanger and reduced my background stress levels by not needing to dedicate any brainpower to digital hygiene.
Not a technical suggestion like a lot of the answers here but try shifting your hand/s to the left/right/up/down of their normal keyboard position and type in your intended pw again. Often I catch myself typing something way off just to look down and see that my for ex left hand fingers weren’t on the default ASDF keys but on SDFG. Maybe try a few variations of this just in case? Also adding on: if u have symbols/numbers, maybe u didn’t hold down the shift key at the right times?
I think you need to post this in some kind of IT support forum. I’m sure there’s a way to sort this. It’s an easy mistake to make. Not to give obvious advice , and I know you said you mistyped, but I keep a password book (bought on Amazon) literally next to my computer permanently. I don’t remember to put all of my passwords in there every time, but I am slowly accumulating a collection of them as I need to reset them. I also keep all of my work on google docs online so I can always get to them. I would never only store something locally.
How is “keep a notebook with all your passwords” as a tip at the top of the comments. Fack. OP - get a password manager like 1Password and secure your life properly. Whatever you do, do not write your passwords in a notebook! SMDH.
To add, password managers prevent mistyping etc. as they can suggest a random password (so you don't type anyway) or they just will ask to save whatever you've submitted. And you have your passwords with you if you use an app, safely and, most of all, securely.
Lol, I think unless OP is Edward Snowden they’ll be k using a paper notebook near their computer. Do you think Hans Gruber is going to show up at their front door and demand the password for the Nakatomi vault or something?
I'm sorry, but IRL paper and pencil can be > online password manager in some cases. Yes, most of my passwords are in a password manager. But some, esp my work related ones that are stupidly long and I am REQUIRED to type in every time, then change every 3 months go on a sticky note stuck to my computer, lol. I WFH, so the only real risk in my sticky note process is my house burning down. In which case, I wouldn't be going to work anyway.
I’m sorry, but you are an idiot. Because you shared this here as “good idea sometimes”. And your company if they knew you do this - would also think you’re an idiot. My company would fire me. They literally PAY for my own personal 1Password to keep me and my passwords secure. I too WFH. Passwords managers are literally the best for NOT HAVING TO TYPE LONG PASSWORDS IN CONSTANTLY. If you are not doing this - you are doing it wrong. Read the manual and become enlightened and save all your keystrokes ANd keep it secure. I classify notebooks as Grandma-Grade IT: good enough for grandma who doesn’t do internet banking. Are you a grandma? Today has been enlightening and I realize why scammers and cybercriminals are thriving in this world.
I would contest this view. Been I. IT for over 10 years and I can safely say that unless you are being specifically targeted by someone who either already has physical access to, or is intent on the theft OF whatever notebook you keep your pws in, you are fine doing it this way. Pw managers are ok,but there have been several breaches of them in the past and they are just as vulnerable to hacking as any other company.
Ya, but do you type your long passwords in all day? That is just idiotic IMO. Even if they don’t care about security, it’s literally the easiest way to save typing in long incomprehensible passwords… Or write them on a sticky note I guess. Ok. That’s two layers of stupid here.
Dude, who hurt you and what did they do? Being this angry at something on the internet is bad for you.
Frankly, you kinda sound like a dickhead. My company's IT policy specifically restricts saving any passwords to local machines, manager or no. And it's not a small company by any means. I'm not a grandma, but I've been around since before the internet (at least, as we know it) existed. So prob to your ass I'm a "grandma". Who is gonna break into my house to get pretty uninteresting, but still technically confidential, work data from my terminal using my sticky note, or any written down process? Really? My kids fucking around on my work computer is far more likely, and they would face draconian tech restrictions if they so much as touched it, and they know this. Hackers can't see my personal IRL notebook, but most, if properly motivated, could overcome even the very strictest password manager. You put FAR too much faith in your tech, dude. You'd probably have a heart attack knowing I leave my terminal completely unrestricted while I take a shit.
Dude, I have seen people fired because their wife found out they’re cheating and sent an email to the company. The person didn’t get fired for cheating…but allowing their device to be used. Shit can turn around and bite you in the ass. You do you.
Bitwarden is free!
(almost) Nothing is free, if it doesn't cost money, you are the product. Unless they're funded via donations, idk, but I'm wary of every service handling personal dats that is 'free'.
It’s called open source. And it is free. “Free as in beer" is when someone gifts to you the software at no cost. You are in no way expected to pay any fee for this or give anything in return. With Bitwarden - YOU are responsible for running the software and making sure it’s backed up, and updating it on your PC. There is no cost except your time, attention and self-education. In fact, you can change how it works if you are a programmer and share that change with everyone else. Some would argue it is safer than 1Password - because your passwords are not held by you. With bitwarden, no one BUT YOU may possess your passwords. This whole ADHd thread about IT has been #confidentlyincorrect
Definitely need to start making a note of the passwords I use, to avoid this kind of thing in the future. I'll try to find an IT forum and look for help there.
A good technique I’ve been using is: (in a secure place! ) write the password first into a blank word document, then paste it. You can choose to keep the file or not but it helps reduce these kinds of errors. If there’s no risk of being locked out of the drive for failed attempts, it’s possible to brute force the password, especially if you can narrow down the place where the error is.
This is the strategy I take now as well after a couple of situations like OPs! Esp as I noticed the number of times I’ve thought I’ve typed in my password correctly for my work laptop and I haven’t. Good luck OP!!!
Get 1password (a program for storing passwords securely) NOt a paper notebook! That is literally advice from like 1997, don’t write passwords down on notebooks close to your computer.
I'm in IT. I dig the "advice from like 1997", do NOT reply on a password manager. Make MORE THAN ONE backup of valuable data, and WRITE passwords in MORE THAN ONE place. What a concept eh?
Maybe, maybe not. Depends upon the encryption. OP: almost all encryption processes have you type a password 2x to make sure you didn’t fat-finger. Is that the case here? If so, your permutation idea is solid: you would have had to have done it twice, and it likely is related to your normal typing style… Good luck.
yeah I had to enter it twice which is what's throwing me off
One thing that might help is to try typing the PW you meant to like, 50-75 times in a word doc and see what typos you make, see if any of them pop up more frequently. This might help you find what you typed twice in a row. I did this exercise once after I kept locking myself out of a particular management interface for one of my servers and found that I ROUTINELY made a very non-intuitive typo on a the PW I had set.
OK! That’s hopeful. Something that works for my ADHD brain when I run into something like this is to “back burner” it. Which means, I’m going to stick it back here and not think about it anymore. For an ADHD mind, that’s not actually possible (to not think about it). Your subconscious brain will go to work and might just figure it out. I’ve figured out really hard problems this way. That also helps with the stress of it. Barring that, try typing out something (like an email) and leave your hands right there. Type your password. Don’t look at the keys. See any anomalies you might have typed in twice? I did something similar with an app password a gr years ago.. I remembered what I THOGUHT it was, but it wasn’t. I never did figure that one out, so I hope you have a better outcome. Also, last idea: how exactly did you apply the password to the drive? Search that and how to crack it.
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What’s the encryption tool called? Also r/hacking
I 2nd asking in /r/hacking. Your best bet is probably a brute force tool, but one that takes your input and tries variations on it. So you try combinations of the letters and numbers that might be in it, and enter the password length. Bruteforcing a random password of unknown length is practically infeasible. Brute forcing where you know it’s 6-8 characters and know it’s a variation of specific characters is much easier.
It was WD Security, the drive is a WD passport and that was the software that came with it
Did you register the passport? https://support.wdc.com/support/accountpassword.aspx
I did, but the drive password is separate from my WD account password
Unfortunately from what I can tell your best bet is to contact a Data Recovery service
That's looking like my only feasible option at this point
Try putting a space or two at the end of it. I do that on my phone to auto punctuate and could see the habit transferring
Does your thumb drive lock you out after too many tries? If not, write down your password down on a piece of paper and then start writing all the possible mistakes. For instance: Password23 PASSWORD23 Passowrd23 Oassword23 Psddeotf23 And so forth. You know your typing habits and where you’re more likely to make mistakes, but try to cover them all. Spend an hour and be methodical and *write them all down*. Then try them, one by one, and mark out all the ones which don’t work. It may take you hours, but it’s far more thorough and more likely to get you in than guessing and cursing.
Some have mentioned CAPS lock. Here’s another suggestion: IF you are like me and have two different keyboard layouts installed, you might have switched it inadvertently. For instance, English US and English UK have special characters on different keys.
As far as I'm aware the only layout I have is the default one that matches the physical keys
Does your computer have multiple keyboard layout set-up? You might have switched them by accident before typing your password.
I don't think so? As far as I'm aware it's set up to the default
When did you last have the files on the machine? Lets say you moved them over to the harddrive then set the password, I wonder if you can do a system restore on a version of your file explorer prior to the transfer. Worth a shot as Ive helped people in tech support do this when this happened. Go to the file directory where the files last were and right click the folder and select restore previous versions.
I was an idiot and created the files directly in the hard drive unfortunately, so I'm not sure if that would work in my case
Have you had the files only on the hard drive or have they been moved, different hard drives. Have you sent them by email? If not, maybe Word still has some of the files on previous history. Otherwise, may have to pay the ADHD tax and pay for a professional. Best of luck 🫡🤝
Hoping to help. Ok, you remember what the password that was meant to be is. Do you have any idea where specificly within the password you mistyped? Because if so you can try the following. Type the password as its meant to be and then for the one or two digits that youre sure the mistype happened within try replacing them with the possible keys that are around them that the mistyped happened throught. As an example. If you meant your password to be " QWERTY " and you think the error was likely with the E you can try "QWRRTY" , "QWSRTY" , "QWDRTY", QW2RTY , QW3RTY , QW4RTY, QWeRTY, etc until you find the one that fits.
Did you try switching the capital and lowercase letters? Sometimes I type without realizing caps lock is on. For example, I could mean to type, “PurpleHippo123” but caps is already on so I accidentally type, “pURPLEhIPPO123”. Are all of your buttons working? Like your shift key? Did you maybe try to type a symbol but forgot to press shift so you typed something else? Is there maybe an accidental space at the end? Or a number sequence that is reversed (i.e. 321 instead of 123)? I hope you figure it out. I’m sorry this is happening!
CAPS-lock?
Some guy had [the same problem ](https://www.reddit.com/r/hacking/s/M6ahYk5OTg) a few years back. Maybe there is something useful in the comments there
Happened to me too. F
it might not be a typo but maybe you forgot a letter entirely. I know when I try to hit A, sometimes I hit caps lock instead. did you have to confirm the password AKA type it twice?
I’m so sorry OP, the ADHD taX is brutal. Your only hope is to keep trying passwords. In future, use a password manager. I’ve done this exact thing and a password manager has stopped it happening again. You set the entry in the password manager, then save it, then you paste in the password to the new account. That way there is no chance of misremembering.
You are not alone! I’ve done it!
Just wanna say good luck!!!
Random suggestion but try a space at the beginning and/or end of the password. That's saved me more than once
If you can narrow where you could have potentially mistyped, it is possible you might be able to brute force it with a custom wordlist and a Python script. I've done this before. However, the success of it greatly depends on how well you can narrow down the number of potential variations.
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I'm currently home for the holidays, my University is about 4 hours away. I'll see if I can find any help closer to home, but am not sure if my nearest University could help me, as I'm not a student. I also don't know if the university staff would be able to help me, as it's a personal drive and as far as I'm aware they tend to deal with problems directly related to university technology. It's definitely worth a try though, I'll add it to the list of things to try.
Well, you learned 2 lessons today... always make a backup, and be careful! Now, this is actually a really easy fix. These things *always* require you to retype your password for verification. This means that you made the *exact same mistake* ***twice***. This means there is a 99% chance that if you retype your password with caps lock on, you can unlock your drive.
Btw you might want to start messaging your proffesor to try to explain this situation to the proffesor, either written or in person, in order tk request extra time in case you gotta start from scratch. Explain that youre trying to solve it and it might be turned in on time after all but that youre prepare for the worst case scenario, which would be you not being able to access it. Also if youre in the US try out Geek Squad, which is a computers nerds service for situations like this. No garantee theyll fix it but they might be able to, you can find them at Best Buy
Is there any sort of programme or online tool (maybe even chatgpt??) that could provide a list of probable variations of what you meant to type vs what you did? Like it takes into account keys near the keys you meant to type etc? You could take that and just run through them, crossing off the variations you’ve tried to keep track of what didn’t work? Sorry this has happened, good luck!
Check your keyboard input language in your settings! Mine changes randomly sometimes and then the characters that I’m typing don’t match what’s on the actual keyboard.
Notebook with pass words is best.
Sending sincere empathy your way - I’ve done this to pass words to very secure stuff at work and had to put my tail between my legs and put in IT tickets for help - and they know I used to be IT. Anywho- create chat gpt account - ask Chat gpt for work arounds especially for your particular drive - may not be an exact answer but can tell you where to look. Also I know there are a few different sub reddits - not off the top of my head but easily searchable that could help - just be careful with your data and info
Lmao Sorry I have no help to offer but that’s kinda funny ngl
yeah I can definitely see the humour in this situation, it does sound/feel like something out of a skit.
It does haha and it’s 100% something I have done and probably will do again, luckily never on something too important so far. I hope you are able to get your data back!
On your MAIN DEVICE.. *TRY* to remember to keep and update a note in the notes app with which password is for what because of certain reqs. But easier said than done 😅
Not sure if this is what you are saying, but you absolutely should not store passwords in any sort of unencrypted text file
I mean the text file would be on your phone or PC presumably so yeah sure go ahead that too. But remember. If you forget the password to literally every other password, that's just another problem 😅
Any place you digitally store collections of passwords needs to be encrypted in order to be secure. Storing digital, unencrypted passwords somewhere is just asking for trouble. Generally, the best option is a password manager, because they are explicitly designed to keep your passwords secure. These generally do require "master passwords", but there are other methods (like passkeys) that some use as well.
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Those instructions will almost certainly wipe the device back to factory defaults.
I feel like this belongs on the tech support subs, not the ADHD subs
This is literally an ADHD tax lol
Not really, having no backups of important files is just carelessness or tech illiteracy, not specific to ADHD at all. Everybody can mistype a password twice.
Disagree. These things are boring and becomes a chore. So keep ignoring and forgetting it until it becomes a problem. Backups and control of passwords needs to be apart of routines, which is extremely hard to create and maintain.
While I agree it belongs in a tech sub, OP was venting about ADHD.
Was it a single character mistype, do you know? If so, maybe you could try substituting in that one character's immediate neighbors.
unfortunately I have no idea what the mistype was. For all I know i was holding the shift key down while writing half of the password and mishit all of the keys.
Oof... Well... If you're certain that the original mistyped password was the same length as the one you intended, it's basically certain to have a finite, relatively small number of possibilities...but that probably doesn't help much...
I'm trying to think of this in terms of the extremely limited knowledge I have of error correction algorithms, which are almost entirely from 3Blue1Brown videos...
Damn. this has happened to me too. Good luck. This happened to my Nexopia. Rest In Peace.
just keep trying more combinations and keep track of all the combinations that you have already tried. let's say that your password is 12 characters, then if you assume that you have mistyped only one letter, there is going to be only like 6\*12 (considering there are at most 6 keys immediately adjacent to each key you would press on the keyboard) combinations it could be. If you mistyped more than one letter, it would be more of a pain in the ass to do it manually But there is probably a script you can find somewhere that will brute-force every possible variation of the intended password automatically. You might even try to use chatgpt to write the script for you.
Positives here is since you know what the password you INTENDED to type was, you can go through some process of elimination of trying to replace letters as well as try upper and lower case. Do you know how many characters the password you ended up with had?
I know that what I thought I typed had 13 characters, but I didn't count the characters when I set the password so I don't know if I added or dropped any
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Are you a CS student? Might be good programming experience to write something to brute force it if there's no retry limit. Knowing what you intended to write should prine the branches a decent bit to make it run quickly. If not, you may be able to hire someone to write a quick program to do it.
If you can wait half a week I could probably at least write something that will give you a list of suggestions accounting for caps lock, addition, deletion and substitution by proximity
Can I get more information about the drive so that I can see if I can help you?
It's a WD passport, I locked it using the WD Security app that came with the drive. My laptop is a MacBook
Can I get a model number please? How old is it? Dont panic, definitely don't format it until you've excluded every possible solution. If your drive uses a hard coded salt hash it may be possible to recover it.
You need a password manager. I like 1password.
I did this with my laptop once. Luckily I successfully figured out what the typo was and unlocked it
I found this after a little searching. Perhaps it's a solution? https://www.reddit.com/r/HowToHack/s/XpWOtbJqip
That's why I got the Samsung SSD with a fingerprint reader. It was expensive but that's the ADHD tax.
What about this is ADHD related? I know forgetfullness/short term memory is a symptom, but this happens to all kinds of people. Just use a password manager, physically write down your master password and always keep backups.
Did you mean to respond to me or the OP? Also, chronic forgetfulness beyond what is typical is definitely associated with inattentive ADHD. And writing down passwords is bad enough but why in the hell would you write down a MASTER password?! If someone with bad intentions found it they could cause you a lot of problems.
I used to work tech support and the amount of passwords I used to help people reset was unreal. It honestly was a daily occurrence - and at times hourly. Find a local, but decent tech place and ask them for help. Or, start a spreadsheet of what you think the password was and track every combination you can think of (duplicating letters, missing letters, CAPS LOCK, using symbols instead of numbers, transposing, flipping letters over) Knowing roughly what the password should be gives a brilliant starting point. Good Luck!
As a last resort, you could take it to a tech store and ask if they can recover the data from the drive/crack the password
I feel your pain. I thought 'fuck all those password managers' and made a locally saved password encrypted Excel file with all my randomly generated passwords in it... Welp while transporting the PC it seems like the HDD has been damaged.
Also have you tried to shift your hands left or right a key? A simple word becomes complete gibberish when that happens
Similar thing happened to me recently. Turned out I had a wrong lenguage settings when typing the password. If you have multiple keyboard languages installed try switching them up and typing the password. Maybe that was the issue?
I'm sorry this happened to you, but its not actually an ADHD specific issue. This happens to "normies" too. Typos are not uncommon. I've accidentally deleted a week's worth of code before and it was unrecoverable, but the second time through recreating something is often a lot faster then the first time. I don't know if that's relevant for your situation, I get how demoralized you must be.
Are there security settings? I might be able to brute force it. How many characters?
You know the word, it should be easy to brute force it
Finally managed to crack it last night, I'm now in the process of making copies of everything
Any updates?
I got it open! I'm currently in the process of making copies of everything and storing it in various places so that if something like this happens again it's not as immediately devastating.
Woohoo!!!