Sensors only affect the range at which you can scan ships and other objects. They don't affect what materials you might encounter.
Databanks can be randomly acquired by scanning other ships, but it's totally up to RNG. I would presume you can get them other ways as well, but for encoded I always just head to Jameson Crash site and scan all the grade 5 mats there and then trade them into other things.
You should still scan other ships whenever you can though, as you're going about doing other things, but you can't count on getting anything specific that way.
Databanks can be randomly acquired by scanning other ships, but it's totally up to RNG. I would presume you can get them other ways as well, but for encoded I always just head to Jameson Crash site and scan all the grade 5 mats there and then trade them into other things.
You should still scan other ships whenever you can though, as you're going about doing other things, but you can't count on getting anything specific that way.