TM - External Disk Drive Not Detected in Recovery Mode

Hello Apple Lovers,
I am using the My Passport for Mac 500GB disk drive with time machine on my MacBook Air to create data backups.
I checked the disk for any corruption using Disk Utility. No issues were found. I find the disk works excellantly in terms of creating backups and restoring them inside time machine.
I cannot detect my external disk for restoring entire images of the OSx in recovery mode. For some reason, TM will not detect my backup disk in the recovery mode. I use the WD Security software on my disk to lock it, however, never before has the security lock posed any problem to me. I used to see a prompt appear for me to unlock the drive in recovery mode on attempting to access the TM backups.
Please take your time in replying to my post. I recovered my entire system last week and restored all the data using TM's twlight view. No rush! I successfully created a backup of my fresh OSx Mavericks on the MacBook Air with all the data restored using TM. I only wanted to troubleshoot this issue in case something occurs in the future that may require me to restore data using TM in recovery mode.
I browsed extensively through many of the discussions covering Time Machine. None mentioned my particular dilemma. Any assistance would be a valuable controbution not only to me, but other Apple users who may purchase My Passport for Mac drives and encounter a similiar problem.

megaram wrote:
I use the WD Security software on my disk to lock it, however, never before has the security lock posed any problem to me. I used to see a prompt appear for me to unlock the drive in recovery mode on attempting to access the TM backups.
You will need to avoid using third party software if you hope to access the disk and data in recovery mode.
If the WD software encrypts your data recovery mode will need a way to decrypt it. Recovery mode is a 'reduced mode' that only runs Apple software (not third party software) so the WD drivers that decrypt the disk will not be installed & Disk Utility or Migration Assistant will not be able to open the data on the disk.
There have been long threads that make me steer clear of using ANY Western Digital drive software with 10.9.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5475136?start=0&tstart=0
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6202 <- WD had to remove software from Macs because it ruined peoples data on 10.9.
There are other threads on WD disk tools causing errors on 10.9, external hard disks do not require the use of additional software on OS X - these apps & drivers are mostly junk that is not a good idea to install.
If you really want to protect your data with encryption the features are already built in to OS X, it's called Filevault. It will encrypt your internal HD & your Time Machine backups (when the OS is encrypted). It works with Apple tools & doesn't rely on any third party drivers.
You will need to disable the 'WD security lock' and make sure the disk works without the WD software if you hope to have any chance of reading it in recovery mode.

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