I have a WD 500 gb ext hdd. After problems due to encryption issues. I was able to recover my data and copy onto another drive of the same model. My question now is is it possible to format this drive to work without usb controller and work internally? Basically , I want to eliminate the controller and smartware. Would it be safe to trust this as a second back up if the controller and smartware was the problem in the first place?

AIUI, your drive is a just a regular internal SATA model. You only need to reinitialise and reformat it.

As for trusting the drive with your data, check its SMART attributes and run a surface scan on it. A utility such as MHDD will tell you if there are any "slow" sectors, ie those that require several read retries.

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I think this is another passport drive with usb embedded on pcb. If you post your hdd's model number we'll tell you for sure. But since he speaks about encryption and removing the usb then most probably it is a passport.
If this is the case, there is no SIMPLE way around it, you'd better just buy a new sata hdd.

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Could be a MyBook or something similar which is a regular SATA interface drive, with all the horrible USB encryption bits on the bridge board inside the housing. If so then just take it out and format etc as per fzabkar. Or it's a 2.5" that perhaps has only USB on the PCB like northwind said.

You need to be more specific and give more detail about the drive.

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WD500 gb My Book Essential ext. hdd. Model WDBAAF5000EBK. Drive itself is WD5000AADS. It has a connection for sata cable.

Check health via SMART and a scan with something like MHDD as mentioned above, format and you're good to go.

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