Swapped 2TB drive from Firewire enclosure to USB 3, Mac cannot read its data

[Mistercharlie]

I pulled my old 2TB WD MyBook backup drive out of its FireWire/USB 2.0 enclosure, and hooked it up to a powered SATA>USB-3 adapter.

It will connect to my M1 Mac mini, but it "cannot be read". I can initialize it, but I'd rather not.

Any idea why the Mac can't read the data already on the drive? The drive has 2 partitions, if that changes anything.

 

[Fishrrman]

Is there any chance you could find an older Mac running an older version of the OS, to which to connect it?
And see if it will mount on that Mac?

 

[Mistercharlie]

Is there any chance you could find an older Mac running an older version of the OS, to which to connect it?
And see if it will mount on that Mac?

I reckon there is! I'll report back soon

 

[Mistercharlie]

Is there any chance you could find an older Mac running an older version of the OS, to which to connect it?
And see if it will mount on that Mac?

OK, I checked on an older Mac, and the same thing happens. I can't read it, and offers to ignore it or initialize it.

 

[wardie]

Have you independently verified that the SATA->USB3 adapter works e.g. with a different drive?

 

[Mistercharlie]

Have you independently verified that the SATA->USB3 adapter works e.g. with a different drive?

I have. It works fine with other SSDs and HDDs. It even works with this one—if I want to initialize the drive and start over.

 

[Chancha]

MyBook series enclosures may have had hardware encryption by default, depending on which era yours was from. If that's the case, it means the bare disk pulled and connected via any other method than the original enclosure would not be able to get the data read as is.

If your drive has valuable data that has not been backed up, put it back the original enclosure, copy the data elsewhere, then you can pull the drive to be reformatted and used elsewhere. If your enclosure is broken or inaccessible then you got a real problem here.

Edit: quick google returned this info, if it helps:

How to decrypt a WD MyBook drive after its removed from the enclosure?

It can be done. The encryption key is stored in a block near the end of the raw disk (raw = not in the enclosure). That key is encrypted, based on your password, or if none is used, on a factory-set key. Here is a paper that describes the setup: I myself have successfully removed the 4TB drive...

community.wd.com

 

[Mistercharlie]

The encryption is an interesting point. I shall hook it up via USB 2 and check the situation, but I don’t remember ever dealing with it. And it’s just a CCC backup drive, so I can wipe it. I was just trying to avoid starting from scratch, as these spinning drives are so slow and noisy!

 

[Mistercharlie]

I gave up and erased the drive. I figured it would be quicker to just create new backups than to keep screwing around, and I have spare copies of the data in the meantime.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Wise decision!