Hello again!
If you are hearing unusual sounds or physical malfunctions, your problem may be entirely different from mine.
However, here is what I learned, and how I succeeded in recovering data from a MyBook drive when a USB bridge failed after encrypting the whole thing with a default key:
Very few USB external drives are actually a hard drive with a USB connector. Almost all of them are a conventional PC hard drive, plus a “bridge” that converts its interface into the USB you plug into. I learned that, on most of those models, Western Digital uses USB bridges that, in addition to changing the disk’s block size, encrypt your data whether you choose a password or not. For added headache, there are at least five different companies making the chips, all of which work in their own special way.
The risk here is when these hard drives go bad. The very nature of a USB bridge complicates access to the drive, and exacerbates any data recovery. Further, sometimes the actual bridge is the part that goes bad. Either way, Western Digital tells you that you’re out of luck – unless, of course, you contract one of their recommended data recovery services, to the tune of several thousand dollars.
Thomas Kaeding worked out how to break their encryption with software. It takes weeks, but the data can usually be recovered.
His work is prominent in this thread: How to decrypt a WD MyBook drive after its removed from the enclosure? - #129 by kgrandolph
His github site is GitHub - themaddoctor/linux-mybook-tools: tools for opening some encrypted WD My Book drives in linux, and his tutorial is here: linux-mybook-tools/Mounting encrypted WD disks in linux.pdf at master · themaddoctor/linux-mybook-tools · GitHub
Someone built an executable called reallymine to automate it for certain types of missing USB bridges: GitHub - andlabs/reallymine: WD MyBook encrypted hard drive decryption (still WIP).
I just did it “from scratch” on an Ubuntu VM, using a ddrescue image of each damaged disk. The image itself appeared unreadable until I learned of this process. The results were visible right away, and once I was encouraged by that, it took weeks for it to finish. I recommend putting the apparatus on some sort of UPS.
If you need assistance recovering the disk data itself - encrypted or not - there’s someone in Maryland, USA, that I could recommend. He would charge you, but likely not as much as a commercial service.
