Everything worked fine till the USB connector on the box broke (sunk inside). A friend tried to solder it without a success.
So I decided to use the HDD in my pc. It's a regular WD10EADS 1.0TB 32MB caviar green.

The system recognized the disc, the Windows OS also, it just said that the disc needs to be formatted.
Well, there are a lot of files on the disc that I don't want to be erased...

I tried "Find and Mount" and "AccessData FTK Imager" but none reports that there's anything on the disc...

Help?

100% free in Disk Management, File System: RAW, Healthy:

Seriously?

Search the forums - your drive is factory encrypted using an Initio controller; you need to get another WD SATA to USB from a MyBook - preferably with the same firmware. Once you do this the drive (over USB) will show a valid FS.

Yeah... already did I search on this forum after I posted this thread...
I guess it can be merged with the topic: Western Digital MyBook essential data recovery as I am not the first one with this problem.
Well... after reading that topic I realized that I will need more nerves that I actually have so I did a format of the disc.
It's now in my case, as a 5th disc, all empty but functional.

where are you from ???

my friend were with regular disconnects from usb and we open the my book essential and gavce the same result .... raw system file but the board of the case was not dead and i could retrieve all the data to another hard drive

I have the same issue, the mini-usb connecto broke and I have rellevant data that I cannot loose. I already lost the deadline for the IRS, however I will not pay an absurd amount for data recovery.
I never selected the option to encrypt data, therefore cannot believe that although I did not setup a password, the stupid Elite Book did it. I am upset, the weight of the unit is too heavy to have a mini-usb connector, the advertise was to save your important memories and I am stuck. Of course I will not format the drive, but I am out of options, could not find an emultator to fix this issue to allow access in a conventional usb drive interface. Any ideas?!?

See if it is feasible to resolder the USB connector back in place. Or find another controller with the same specs. Of course, if the connector broke, is it because of a fall or some kind of shock, then there is potential that something else more serious could be wrong with the drive itself. Careful there!

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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