Charger and Spyglass2 with new encryption- problem detecting as USB but clones well as SATA troubles

[ThomasH]

I think I'm on my 4th recent portable WD drive where the drive clones great (all heads full speed) as a SATA drive (ROM soldered onto non-locked SATA PCB), but for which the drives simply do not show up as USB at all.
I've tried direct USB connect to motherboard USB, the Deepspar USB Stabilizer, etc.

I don't really know what to do with these yet since PC3000 doesn't allow decryption through the utility as SATA.

Has anyone faced this and have any suggestions / hints for the issue? -- Something to force USB detect or somehow to decrypt after cloning through SATA?

[Square]

Have the same issue with a few Charger drives.

ACE team, is there any plan in the pipeline, to be able to decrypt it in the utility?

[msurgeon]

Since the drive is decrypted through the MCU on the USB board, you should convert that board to SATA. Otherwise no way to decrypt from unlocked SATA board.

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Source of the post Since the drive is decrypted through the MCU on the USB board, you should convert that board to SATA. Otherwise no way to decrypt from unlocked SATA board.

Well,
That USB Board Is Not Unlocked Its Locked So No SA Access And if the board is not working then only way is swap MCU to another board and try if that works i am going to try this tommorow

[Blizzard]

Assuming the original PCB works, this is a summary of our procedure:
1) Write the original or a compatible ROM to an unlocked PCB.
2) Backup the important firmware modules.
3) Check the integrity of the second level translator(T2).
4) Make adjustments to the firmware to stabilize the drive.
5) Modify the original USB PCB by adding a SATA connector.
6) Recover the data using PC-3000 SATA port + Data Extractor.

[Blizzard]

Source of the post...if the board is not working then only way is swap MCU to another board and try if that works i am going to try this tommorow

That's a good idea If you have the equipment and skills for that. Let us know how it turns out. In my opinion if you don't have a lot of experience with this package, swapping the MCU should be outsourced to a company that specializes in reballing chips. The MCU on these boards is a very small and delicate package. It's not like the big BGA packages we work with in flash recovery. If you damage the controller during the removal or reballing process you have most likely lost the customer's data.

[gterry]

So to get an unlocked PCB is the only way to buy one from the Chinese link? Or is there a way to make one yourself? Thanks Blizzard for the procedure that you listed above!

[gterry]

bump

[msurgeon]

If you have the luxury of time you can order one quite inexpensively from China. It normally takes around 30 days to arrive. As far as making your own unlocked board, you can do that for Palmer drives but you still need an unlocked one to begin with. This is detailed here: https://blog.acelaboratory.com/wd-smr-h ... locks.html

[gterry]

Thanks Surgeon, do you have any reliable vendor/links for the Chinese route?