WD-Decrypte VS reallymine

Many WD drives have always-on encryption in the SATA bridge. Those can be decrypted with programs you can find on GitHub. Here and Here for example.

People might suggest you remove the drive from the housing, but be careful doing this. In addition to the encryption you applied yourself, many WD external drives have always-on encryption in the SATA USB bridge. If you remove the drive from that bridge the encryption will prevent you from reading the data on the drive. There is some software to undo this encryption, here and here for example.

This advice is incomplete. Unfortunately WD MyBook drives often have encryption in the USB-SATA bridge (that's turned on from the factory). There are several applications for decrypting the drive. Here's paper on this.

It's likely to be encrypted, like the other person wrote, WD did this in the SATA-USB bridge chip. There are several tools to get around this. ex 1, ex2.

Many of these drives have always-on encryption provided by the USB SATA bridge. There are tools to decrypt them, like this, and this, but these are inconvenient to use.

If you don't want to do that then you can try to remove the drive from the enclosure and have a look at how it's constructed. If it has a SATA to USB bridge then you can try connecting it internally on a PC. However, many WD drives have always-on data encryption in the USB-SATA bridge. You can undo this encryption on some models with this tool, or this tool.

Maybe… but you will need a level of technical skill (or a friend that does). https://github.com/andlabs/reallymine

Many WD external drives are hardware encrypted by the USB bridge board. You should provide the model number printed on the enclosure label, as well as any model number + revision printed the USB bridge PCB for other users to assist you properly. If the drive is encrypted, your options are limited to either repairing the original USB bridge, purchasing an identical replacement, or depending on the controller chip reallymine may be able to decrypt it directly.

Many WD drives have always-on encryption in the SATA bridge. Those can be decrypted with programs you can find on GitHub. Here and Here for example.

Here's a thread about it.

People might suggest you remove the drive from the housing, but be careful doing this. In addition to the encryption you applied yourself, many WD external drives have always-on encryption in the SATA USB bridge. If you remove the drive from that bridge the encryption will prevent you from reading the data on the drive. There is some software to undo this encryption, here and here for example.

Depending on what's under the hood (Passports all look the same but different generations have different chips inside), you could have a friend who has a bit of tech know-how give this tool a go: https://github.com/andlabs/reallymine - worth trying your luck

Ideally, someone with first hand experience can just tell you. Alternatively, you can go down a rabbit hole and find ancient forum posts between shadowy figures discussing these things, and try to make a decision based off of that. But really, your best bet is to try them in order. First software tools (e.g. ReallyMine, which is free), and if that doesn’t work, buy a replacement bridge (which likely has to match the original in multiple ways to be compatible — without the original, chances of success are a lottery). If the data can be decrypted without the original bridge, these are the only two options that stand a chance of working. At most it costs as much as a spare drive / bridge (or a few, but don’t do that).

Either fix the original pcb or look into using something like reallymine https://github.com/andlabs/reallymine

I'm trying to assist a friend of mine to recover his files from a WD MyBook Essential.The hard drive spins inside the case, but the computer won't see it. Unfortunately WD encrypt the hard drives, so even if I removed the drive from ⠀the case, I'm not able to read it with a SATA/USB adapter. I'm pretty sure it's a faulty controller, because sometimes, when I try to reconnect it, I can see the "MyDrive" partition, but I can't open it. I made it just once: the PC was reading the files, but unfortunately the connection was loose (I was trying to jiggle a little with the connector) and when it disconnected, I wasn't able to read the hard drive anymore. A friend of mine who had 2 empty MyBook Essential (because of shucking) gave me his controllers, but unfortunately the REV version is different, so they don't work with my hard drive.When I connect the hard drive whit these controllers, the PC always sees the hard drive but not the partition, and proposes me to initialize the disk (nope, thanks). I've read about reallymine (the hard drive is a JMicron, so it sould be supported) but it didn't worked (but maybe I did something wrong? I just tried the basic command "reallymine decrypt" with the drive connected with the SATA/USB adapter) What else should I try? Thank you in advance!