I purchased this drive back in 2011 and it seems that the circuit board in the enclosure has stopped functioning. If I plug the drive into internal sata or another USB to SATA device I can see the drive however the data is encrypted and I am not able to see the partition etc and windows wants to initialize the drive which I cancel out of. So the Drive seems to be good still.
This is printed on the circuit board: 4061-705089-001 Rev AG
Enclosure Information:
Western Digital-My Book Essential 2TB External USB 3.0/2.0 Hard Drive-Black-WDBACW0020HBK-NESN (Enclosure actually says WDBACW0020HBK-00).
EDIT: Please let me know if you know of anywhere I can purchase a working circuit board.
I’m having the same problem with my 3TB My Book that I purchased in 2011.
This week I purchased a new 3TB My Book to try and salvage the PCB, however the boards are different (appearance and number) so when replaced the HD was not recognized.
I’ve now sent an e-mail for WD support in hopes that they can send/sell me a new PCB of the correct format/number so I can access my data.
It’s incredibly unbelievable that a company would put in such an encryption that you can’t opt-out of nor is it informed anywhere that in case of board failure your data will be basically LOST even though the drive itself is perfectly fine. Honestly I cannot see what benefit they think this brings their customer or who ever though this would be a good idea at all…