I have read at least one forum member has been working on a software utility to ease the decryption of the WD drives with the Initio chip.
By chance I found reference to a hardware system which claims to do something similar.

Any thoughts to discuss?

The following has been copied and pasted from a Google translation chinese to english:

Features of the mobile hard disk decryption card
(3.0,2.0) mobile hard disk decryption card WDDC (WD Decryption card) for WD (My Passport)

Mobile hard disk production of original Western Digital (WD) My Passport series (as shown), through the usb control chip using a hardware encryption technology, encryption technology using a special algorithm, so that the hard disk data is written to the usb port becomes into encrypted state, regardless of whether you set a password.

Therefore, our data recovery work, often encountered WD mobile hard disk failure: power rotation, no abnormal noise, but usb does not recognize the hard drive or does not recognize the capacity, in fact, such problems, many of which are firmware problem (also head damage just keep change heads), firmware issues, general performance for the slow response, identify slow, busy, wait a long time before ready. We all know by modifying the circuit board and soldered directly lead SATA interface leads to the entire usb mobile hard disk to modify the SATA hard disk, using the PC-3000 and other tools to repair the firmware, and data mirroring to a good disk.
But modified to SATA, mirrored data is all garbled, use tools such as R-STUDIO scan, what the data are not, in fact, now the data is encrypted state regardless of the user in the use of the My Passport hard drive WD SmartWare software not set the hard disk password, data are encrypted state, in order to decrypt the data must be decrypted before.
Western Digital Technology Company launched decryption card WDDC (West Data Decryption card) is the encrypted data decryption tool, easy to use, plug and play, whether it is Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba encrypted disk, as long as your mirror disk directly connected to our decryption card can directly see your data.
WD series mobile hard disk decryption program, we provide to modify usb mobile hard drive circuit board contains the full range of the sata interface welding method and wd Western Digital hard disk recognized disk slow, busy not ready common problem to fix the program.
WDDC (West Data Decryption Card) also has a hard disk riser card, usually can be used to make mobile hard disk card.

Western Digital decryption card WDDC (of West the Data Decryption Card) provides a usb interface, a SATA interface, a desktop machine 12V-5V standard interfaces, the power switch is a, can support 2.5-inch, 3.5-inch SATA 2TB hard drive, support for the brand have Western Digital Seagate, Toshiba, Samsung, Lenovo.

The WDCC-A support: symwave sw6316 master board is :2060-771737-000 (WD10TMVW-11ZSS1)

The WDCC-B support: jms538s controller chips, circuit boards for :2060-771801-002 (WD5000BMVW-11S5XS0) 2060-771714-001

The WDCC-C supports Seagate HDD

Whats the website link?

Loki

Looks like linkbait for
xishu[DOT]taobao[DOT]com

I found the one article quoted above by searching Google for
Western Digital decryption card WDDC
and it was the only place talking about it.

It mentions a contact at WD at the bottom but gives the website for the contact as
xishu[DOT]taobao[DOT]com
Which has entries for the
Western Digital decryption card WDDC
on their site that are actually just WD Passports for sale and nothing to do with a magical decrypting card.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what I see. Let us know if someone finds something like this for real. I could make a lot of money with one of those.

James

how can they call themselves "Western Digital Technology Company "