Once you use the Erase Tool, whatever data that was there in the HDD till now will be gone forever. One can reformat the hard disk with the Erase option available in the WD Unlock Tool. The reason is that there is hardware level encryption in the WD Passport.The Only solution left is that you will have to forget about what was there in the hard disk if you forgot your password and start afresh. Not even the customer care can offer a solution. The WD Security password protection is a 256-bit AES encryption system. The problem with WD Password is that you cannot retrieve the password once it is forgotten. If you had used a password to secure your WD Password, you did it probably because you didnt want anyone else to see the contents which you had stored inside the WD Passport External HDD.