system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How can you have only a limited number of tries to decrypt a hard drive?

Over the years I've seen a number of news stories claiming "person X has critical (financial) information on their hard drive, but they've forgotten the password and have only Y tries left!". I don't understand how this can be the case. A computer might lock you out after a number of failed login attempts, but you should always be able to just remove the drive and read all the data plain as day using some external equipment.

If the drive is encrypted, that presents more of a problem, but I still don't understand how there could be a hard limit on the number of tries to decrypt it (again, if you remove the drive and use external tools).

*(Note: obviously good encryption would preclude pure brute forcing. I'm talking about situations where the user has a chance to remember, guess or somehow reconstruct the password/key - they might just need a few dozen or few hundred tries).*

Are these news stories poorly researched, and do the individuals in question actually have a better chance of recovering their data than is reported? Or am I going wrong somewhere in my assumption that removing the drive and reading the (possibly encrypted) contents from a separate machine is always a possibility?
gpt
You can get encrypted USB drives, for instance.  They can come with a keypad on them for putting in a PIN or passcode.  If after X number number of attempts at inputting the code fails then the drive breaks itself.  This wipes the information on it.