I have been dealing with a wd 500 gb hdd (wdbaaf5000ebk) for about three months. Usb port broke off and was deemed unrecoverable by pro data recovery center. (after they re-soldered connector and tried other usb controllers) It would read as unallocated in disk mgmt (not initialized). I read posts on this site and bought new drive off ebay as well as two separate controllers with same model #. So , now I have 3 different controllers along with the broken one and none of them decrypt my data.However, I put some data on new drive and all three good controllers decrypt it without problems. According to some posters on this site, controller has unique info for their drive. If this is true , why do all three controllers work with new drive and none work with drive in question? I know a second opinion at another pro data recovery center should be my way to go. I just want a definitive answer if there is one. Thanks in advance.

In my opinion, there won't be a definitive answer until a real pro recovery checks this drive out. Why I am saying this? Well because a pro data recovery would not call a drive unrecoverable because the USB port on the controller got broken. So, not so sure about the "pro" in that company/center.

If you are comfortable, would you care to share the name of the place you send the drive to?

It is possible that all three other externals may be compatible among each other and not the drive you care to decrypt, especially if you bought all three from the same place and at the same time, like a retail store for example.

At the same time, there could also simply be something wrong with the drive itself. You mentioned the USB port broke, which is fine, but I am assuming it broke because of some fall or something along those lines. If this is the case, things complicate easily as the drive could have issues as well.

So, was the drive dropped or anything?

Either way, a good professional in-house diagnostic is necessary here.

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Truth!

To add to my previous post, at least I respect that they told you the truth about why the case is unrecoverable according to their ability or findings. Unlike other places who would make some crap up, that was nice of them.

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Took it to flashback data in Austin,TX . They are a recommended data recovery through wd website. Actually, it did fall but only to the point it would lose connection due to the usb being loosened in the fall. It was when i took it out of the case( to see if I could fix it) that it completely broke off. They re soldered it and all the data would be encrypted. A few other usb controllers gave same result. It spins up fine. I was told that the drive itself seems perfectly fine according to other tests. It was cloned without trouble and even the clone was encrypted. As far as the other controllers- one is from new drive off amazon, one is from Hong Kong and last one is from seller in midwest usa.

I believe that we can deal with the encryption issue.

Jon

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http://www.datasaversllc.com

Something is just not adding up. Strange.

Jono is a good choice. Highly recommended by forum members.

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

If there is something unique about your original USB-SATA bridge board, then it will be in the 8-pin serial EEPROM. If you transfer this chip, or its contents, to your donor, then you should be good to go. Such a simple soldering job could be easily handled by your local TV/AV repair shop.

If you need help in identifying this chip, then upload a photo of the component side of the PCB.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

here is the controller

profesionals-help-t20524.html

i answered everything in this thread already since I am the one that worked on it at Flashback Data.

I can't see any markings, but the most likely chip is near the SATA connector, at about 2 o'clock to the largest IC.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

yes

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

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