External HD Password Encryption

If your external drive is still working, you can recover your data with data recovery programs. There are effective data recovery apps like Disk Drill, Wondershare Recoverit. You can try it on a Mac or Windows computer.

The only way to unlock an encrypted volume is by providing the correct password, or by using the recovery key.

Are you sure it is rejecting the password? Several times I have encountered an issue where the password was accepted and the volume was unlocked, but just did not mount due to a file system issue. Unfortunately macOS and Disk Utility don't do provide any indication that this has occurred. I only discovered the problem when I tried using the command line which provided more details. You can try running Disk Utility First Aid first on the physical drive, then on the hidden Container. Within Disk Utility you may need to click "View" and select "Show All Devices" before the physical drives and hidden Containers appear on the left pane of Disk Utility. Even if the First Aid summary says everything is "Ok", click "Show Details" and scroll back through the report to see if any unfixed errors are listed. If errors exist, then run First Aid again until they are gone. If after several attempts the errors remain, then the file system cannot be repaired.

Alifais wrote:

If your external drive is still working, you can recover your data with data recovery programs. There are effective data recovery apps like Disk Drill, Wondershare Recoverit. You can try it on a Mac or Windows computer.

This won't work if the OP is unable to unlock the encrypted volume. The data on an encrypted volume is unreadable until unlocked. The OP is unable to unlock the encrypted volume.

In the case of a rotational hdd, simply erasing or formatting a drive destroys the directory info but leaves the stored data intact. You could still possibly recover that data with the right utility tools.

As @HWTech has previously posted, in the case of encrypted data, which is what you have if you secured the volume with a password in Disk Utility, the data is scrambled - encrypted - as it is written. The only way to unscramble - decrypt it - is to have the decryption key, the password. Without that decryption key, any data that a recovery utility might recover remains just scrambled data.

The amount of data that you could recover would be 0%.

It's a creative idea, but I can't guarantee the results. Also, have you tried it on a Windows computer? I remember that encrypted files for zip files, not for drives, can be seen by Windows. I think there is definitely data that can be recovered if your drive is HDD if you format it. but I can't talk for sure. If it's not the last resort, don't try. If it is SSD, do not try to format it, you cannot recover any data. Have you tried Disk Drill? Does it detect the driver? If it detects and cannot find the data, there is also a byte byte backup option, I suggest you try it too.