chances of decrypt an encrypted volume in external HDD

are there chances of accessing an encypted volume(totally unknown password)stored in an external HDD, totally unplugged from the PC?

Of course.

There are some WD drives where encryption is part of the drive case. The ones I have seen seem to encrypt on a line by line basis. (16 bytes at a time) Adding the USB interface back (from the case) will allow the drive to read. This is assuming that the user did not set a password or enable encryption.

Otherwise, good luck, encryption is there to make reading hard/impossible.

Sorry, I don´t understand totally Igor says of course password can be cracked. From what mscotgrove says, it seems that it is very difficult or near impossible.

Password cracking can take from 1 second to 1000,000,000,000 years approx.

Knowing the user could help. Many users only use only a few passwords. Some users create very strong complex passwords

It really depends on what encryption method was used. If it was one of the newer SHA-256 or MD5 -128 bit encryption, it is not *impossible* but will either take a very long amount of time (even with the entire worlds processing power at your disposal).

As stated previously by mscotgrove, knowing the user increases the chances. Some users at some stage wrote their password down on paper, created a document somewhere on a computer or backed up their encryption on a separate device. Finding these could enable access. If it is a total guessing game more often than not with encryption, if you cant get the password you cant get access without diverting a huge amount of resources in to finding out the password or cracking the password.

This will change in time, the oldest forms of encryption can be cracked in seconds now. So some years/decades down the line the encryption methods we have not will be cracked easily.

SHA-256 or MD5

I hate to be pedantic but these are hash algorithms not encryption. You might use them to 'encrypt' a password but all you are doing is creating a hash of it (pun intended).

Paul

I hate to be pedantic but these are hash algorithms not encryption.

What can I add? ?
e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855
wink

jaclaz

Mine is bigger.
cf83e1357eefb8bdf1542850d66d8007d620e4050b5715dc83f4a921d36ce9ce47d0d13c5d85f2b0ff8318d2877eec2f63b931bd47417a81a538327af927da3e

Mine is bigger.

But - at the end of the day - carrying exactly the same amount of information as mine, thus I hereby I claim mine to be more efficient. wink

jaclaz