I have a 2TB WD Book essential external HD. The Mini USB broke off the circuit board. I put a password using the SmartWare software it came with the HD. Warranty ran out. I bought another enclosure for the HD. The driver installs fine on Windows Vist (64bit) but it doesnt show up on MY Computer. I took a look at Disk Management and it says the HD is unallocated. I have importatn files and dont want to format the drive. What can I do.
Well I’ve got bad news for you. Even if you can get the drive recognized in the new enclosure it will be useless because data is hardware encrypted. See if you can get an electronics repair place to solder on a new port. That little circuit board controls the encryption. About the only other thing is professional data recovery. WD does not sell replacement boards they change constantly also.
Joe
Just wondering if you found a solution. The same thing happened to mine and I’m finding this to be a very common issue that’s leaving a lot of people SOL! My USB was a clean break so we took it to repair place 1 that had no luck and referred data recovery place 2. After 1 1/2 weeks this recovery place had no luck due to the encryption. They are sending it back and we’re going to see if soldering the piece will work. I see a lot of recommendations for trying this but nobody is posting if the attempt actually works.
