i have a wdbaaf5000ebk. The usb connection broke off. Took it to a data recovery center and they resoldered it with what points that were left. However ,they said initio chip would decrypt data. They scanned drive and said it is perfectly fine . It would show up as a raw drive. Ran a couple of freeware utilities and it appears that my 30 gb of data is still there but is encrypted obviously. Tried a different usb board and got nothing. Swapped pcb with donor drive and usb board and got nothing. Original usb board is 4061-505059 rev ae. please tell me what I have to do to get my data. Oh, original pcb has u12 donor does not. HELP!!!

You need same board rev as the original to read the drive or a competent recovery group should be able to recover the drive

If you're not experienced I think it would be better to take it to a DR company, as there's several ways to work with that ones.

Math doesn't add up. If the problem was only the USB connection broken off, after fixing it it should have worked straight away AS IT WAS BEFORE.
Now how and why it comes that "there is ENCRYPTION" ? Wasn't it encrypted BEFORE the USB connection broke off ?

If you took it to a recovery center, why did they not recover it also? And if they really a a recovery center why do you need to look for professionals here?

MY guess is you took it to someone who doesnt really have much idea about it...

100% agree with BlackST. If they repaired the only electrical failure, why now should there be a problem with it logically?

I took my drive to Flashback data in Austin,TX . The tech resoldered it and all he would get was a raw drive (not initialized) . I was told that usb board would not decrypt data. Before breaking it worked fine.Their conclusion was that the drive was unrecoverable. Ordered same model board with different rev. All I get is letter j which is smartware rom or something but not letter k which was my drive's letter before breaking. This is literally my third post about same problem .

So I really think you should go into other DR company, that can help you with the issue.

I dont understand why it is you that is left to do all the work. Surely that is the idea behind sending your HDD to a professional.

MY guess is there is a problem that is not allowing the data to be decrypted properley. the RAW drive is simply an encrypted volume.

this is the My Book Essential which is 100% encrypted as they mentioned here
if ur hdd has password then this is the nightmare

good luck

_________________
Kuwait Data Recovery - UNIX GTC
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. By: Albert Einstein

Something is still missing....
DR company worked on your drive and said it was unrecoverable because.....????
Did you want them to recover data or just re-solder your USB connection?

You still insist that you have a problem with a PCB.... ???

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www.datarecoveryne.com

So I will respond to this. I worked on the drive at flashback data. the USB connection did come in broken off. We replaced it with a fresh usb connector from a stack of the controllers we have here. We verified that all the solder points were connected. placed the drive back onto the usb controller and started it up. Data was still encrypted. We then tried a couple of the other identical controllers we have here and got the same result. Still encrypted

Client told us there was no password used on the drive.

We also tried with a clone of the the drive that was done on a like WD drive and got the same result.

We did deem it unrecoverable after all of our tests were completed since we could not recover the unencrypted data and the drive was returned to the client at no charge.

So you confirm it is actually encrypted ?

100%

Unfortunately what we have is a DR center saying that the data is 100& encrypted and not recoverable after a simple electrical repair, while the customer says it worked fine before this USB connector broke.

More often than not I would tend to agree with the DR center as they generally would have much more experience and a greater understanding of the problems associated with this, but if client is certain that data was accessible previously then maybe the best option is to get a second evaluation somewhere.

Unless the op attempted some DIY frst??

Is there any encryption software installed on a computer that was used to backup data?

_________________
www.datarecoveryne.com

Just a thought: Looking at the pattern of encrypted data in a sector normally full of hex 00 when decrypted (e.g. LBA 1, 2 etc.) may give a clue as to whether this is the typical Initio encryption or something else.

Edited to add: Even the encrypted MBR gives a clue too.

This is 3,5" external WD essential USB2.0 encloser.

With default encrypting (Inic1607E)




First , there is no U12 chip on 5059 external PCB's , probably you meant U2 ?

Drive consist some very important bytes (uses for decrypting) at the end of the drive , their easy could be lost with some wrong steps.
For example:

_________________
Angel Data Recovery

Well these drive come pre-encrypted with or without a password, just needs that smartware usb controller to do the decrypting. So it is possible it was working perfectly fine to the client before it broke. Since he would be unaware of the built in encryption.

I am unaware of what was done to the drive before we saw it.

I encourage the client to get a second opinion. I will come out and say i do not know the entire knowledge of data recovery that everyone else out there knows. Ultimately I want the client to get his data back.

The drive was never opened, and cloned 100% when we had it. I am also pretty sure i returned the enclosure back to him with the new usb connector on the controller board, but I am not 100% positive on that.

It was the initio encryption. It had the same repeating encryption pattern seen on all smartware encrypted drives.

As per your previos post about Smartware password it could be a chance to see if http://www.1stdatarecovery.com/unlock-h ... ssword.htm can do what they say they can:


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Loki