My Book Essential 3TB damaged - trying to recover the data

I have a My Book Essential 3TB purchased in USA that had it controlling board damaged. It is out of warranty. I removed the hard drive from inside the case and I am trying to recover the data. I put it in a desktop and the driver is detected by Disk Management from Windows 7 but as unallocated space. I made some research at this forum and discovered that the drive is encrypted. I don’t have backup of the data (they are not sensitive data, only downloaded movies, books and TV shows, but the drive is full and I don’t remember what download to recover the files).

3 questions:

  • There is some way that I can use the controlling board together with some other hardware to read the disc (presuming that the encryption chip still works)?

  • If I purchase another My Book Essential 3TB in USA, one year and a half later the other, and replace the new hard drive by the old one, it would work (i prefer void the warranty of the new instead to lose the data)?

  • My brother has a My Book Essential 2TB, bought in USA  at the same time, if I place my hard drive inside his case it will work with 3Tb hard drive and decrypt my files?

If someone could help, especially confirming second and third questions, I would appreciate a lot.

Best Regards, 

Send fzabkar a PM he is the most knowledgable on these boards and what can be done. The baords are necessarily interchangable so it gets complicated.

Joe

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