Accessing SmartWare-encrypted drive extracted from My Book External

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

I am working on a My Book external drive that has a broken USB port, with the instruction to copy the data off of the drive.  I extracted the drive from the case but could not see the partition.  I surmised and later got confirmation that the drive was encrypted with SmartWare.  So I have two questions:

  1. Is there a way, using a different USB to SATA interface, I can get to the data?  I have the password for the SmartWare encryption.

  2. We are being sent a replacement drive from WD that is supposedly the same drive.  Assuming the answer to my first question is a hard no, could I swap out the replacement unit’s internal drive with the one I have and then read it?

Thank you for any help you can give!!

2

The data is encrypted by the circuit board where the USB port broke. You can try having the port soldered back on or find a replacement board on ebay. This explains a bit about the boards  http://community.wd.com/t5/Off-Topic-Discussions/Bridge-Boards/td-p/353839 Or there is this 

https://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/70/session/L3RpbWUvMTM5MDMyNjIwNS9zaWQvZVBrTU9YS2w%3D

Joe