External drive no longer recognized :(

Have read FAQ re: My Computer not locating external WD drive.

Previously never installed device. The USB port broke and the device was transferred to another case.  When I plugged it in,  it automatically installed recently and is now no longer working properly.  WDC WD10 EADS-11M2B2 USB Device is showing up under Hardware as working properly and in the Device Manager under disk drives.  However, “Other devices: SM Bus Controller” is appearing as a yellow question mark.

Is there a way to update the driver(s)?  I downloaded and unzipped WDDriver Utilities and WD_SES but nothing is being picked up by the device.  

One thing I was reading about - data encryption.  Was I a victim of WD’s overprotective encryption and is my data now being held hostage until I pay $200+ for their “Data Recovery” friends to remove the encryption???

Hi McFaith, welcome to the Community. Sorry to hear you are having problems recovering your files. I recommend you to contact tech support directly before trying anything else. 

http://support.wdc.com/country/index.asp