external password protected hard drive not mounting

Question

I've got a WD elements 1 TB hard drive that won't mount. It used to work fine in Windows 7. Now, it doesn't work in windows too.

The drive appears in Disk Utilities under Disk Drives as being Device /dev/sdb. The problem is it won't mount.

When typing the following command:

sudo mount /dev/sdb

I get this:

mount: can't find /dev/sdb in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab

and on typing :

$ sudo fdisk -l

I get this:

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x10661065   

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63    61432559    30716248+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2        61432560   312560639   125564040    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5        61432623   108936764    23752071    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda6       143348058   225263429    40957686    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda7       225263493   312560639    43648573+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda8       108936828   141821819    16442496   83  Linux
/dev/sda9       141821883   143347994      763056   82  Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000202043392 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121600 cylinders, total 1953519616 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0002846e

 Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1          2048  1953519615   976758784    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

Answer 1

If you used the WD software to password-protect the harddisk, it is very unlikely that you would be able to use it under Linux. In addition, it sounds like you damaged the filesystem somehow, if you cannot even open it in Windows any more. If you need to encrypt the harddisk, I would suggest that you find a software to encrypt that supports both linux and windows.