Are all WD My Book Externals encrypted through the USB PCB?

No, not all

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SAN, NAS, RAID, Server, and HDD Data Recovery.

Is there an way to tell if the drive is encrypted through Hex such as a FVE-FS reference?

Typically, all drives supporting Smartw@re are encrypted.
Page 5 for a rough idea: http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/U ... 705057.pdf

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Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

I thought some My Books had encryption without Smartware being activated? Done automatically through the USB PCB. If you set a password in Smartware then you get the full benefit of password protected encryption, but I though the data was encrypted anyway through the board. Or is this also a function of Smartware? Just trying to get it clear in my noggin'

it's hardware encryption, so there is no metadata in user space that could tell you about encryption
But generally all My Book drives made for the US have USB encryption enabled.(so far)
I suspect it's gonna change soon because WD switching to SED drives and after that encryption will be done by the drive itself (meaning that a user will always see data as decrypted)

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SAN, NAS, RAID, Server, and HDD Data Recovery.

If the drive was zero-filled at manufacturing time before being installed in the enclosure, and if sector 1 was not subsequently overwritten, then a disc editor (eg DMDE freeware) should show a repeating 16-byte data pattern corresponding to encrypted zeros.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks all.