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Accessing SmartWare-encrypted drive extracted from My Book External

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!!

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

Support for Western Digital Hard Drives | Western Digital

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