PC-3000 Forum

This drive would get ready and ID on DDI with USB addon, but LBA = 0.

On PC3K, family (PebbleBeach I believe, according to C5) isn't supported, but HubLT2 works.

Swapped to SATA PCB, repaired FW, now full LBA access.

But, the data is encrypted (no raw files found) and DE cannot find any "key." The "SED" option in Edit HD ID was "unchecked" by default.

I swapped back to USB PCB and still no LBA (on DDI and on a PC).

I see the USB PCB has a JM chip. Is there any solution to decrypt this drive with the SATA PCB? Thoughts/suggestions?

Thanks,
Brian

P.S. Copies of mods 25 & 38 here: http://files.300dollardatarecovery.com/25and38.zip

Sometimes you can find a My Book bridge board with the same PCB number to decrypt the data afterward. You'll just have to be sure to clone to a destination that's the same LBA size or at least set the max LBA to match. The only other option is to find a SATA drive that's the same family, clone the encrypted data to that, then program the original USB PCB with the donor ROM and use it to decrypt the data from the donor HDA. Total PITA, but sometimes it's the only way.

You can also try searching near the final LBA's for the encryption key. Or you can look in the SA tracks as well, usually is's stored in module 25. If you don't find it there, try just searching in ABA range 6000-8000 and you'll likely find it there somewhere. If you find it, you can try just pasting it into one of the more common key sector locations (usually in blank space anyway) and see if DE will then find it that way.

Thanks for the ideas Jared. Just solved it. Turns out (this is a first for me) that I needed to CHECK the "Enable SED" box in Edit HDD ID. Then sectors instantly decrypted in sector edit.

Good to know. I've never seen that happen yet, but I'll keep it in mind for future cases.

Curious, what SATA PCB revision you've been using and what drive model did it come from?

300ddr wrote:Source of the post Thanks for the ideas Jared. Just solved it. Turns out (this is a first for me) that I needed to CHECK the "Enable SED" box in Edit HDD ID. Then sectors instantly decrypted in sector edit.

Brian Sir ,
Usually we disable SED but if we have to work again with USB board we have to enable it otherwise exactly the same will happen as you experienced

Does DE ver 6.2 support the JMS579 USB chip? It doesn't appear to be identifying the chip.

Just want to add my experience to the discussion. As 300ddr wrote, once you check the "Enable SED" box in the Edit HDD ID dialog box, you can use the SATA board to directly read the data in DE without bothering with decryption. DE doesn't find the key anyway. Additionally, UDMA ver 6.218 cannot identify this drive in the WD USB utility.

I just want to add my experience...

We had the same model drive with USB interface that was SED crypted. After doing the SATA mod, we were able to access SA, patch etc, and also image all the drive. The problem was every sector was still encrypted and PC3K could not detect the decryption type when selecting from the decrypt utility section.

If the SED checkbox was changed, the sectors were still all crypted...

The solution - undo the SATA mod and use the USB PCB & utility to image the drive again but with full sector-sector decryption without changing any SED flags.

Use SATA mod to service/patch FW/correct modules then convert back to USB for best results. DE was imaging at over 130Mb/sec via USB3.0 interface and less than 1000 unreadable from a 3Tb disk

Paradog84 wrote:Source of the post I just want to add my experience...

We had the same model drive with USB interface that was SED crypted. After doing the SATA mod, we were able to access SA, patch etc, and also image all the drive. The problem was every sector was still encrypted and PC3K could not detect the decryption type when selecting from the decrypt utility section.

If the SED checkbox was changed, the sectors were still all crypted...

The solution - undo the SATA mod and use the USB PCB & utility to image the drive again but with full sector-sector decryption without changing any SED flags.

Use SATA mod to service/patch FW/correct modules then convert back to USB for best results. DE was imaging at over 130Mb/sec via USB3.0 interface and less than 1000 unreadable from a 3Tb disk

Well,
Everyone is not so lucky with usb interface its totally PITA

It's simple. Image it while it's still SATA, but image to another same family drive which will be compatible with the USB board you need to use to decrypt it. That way you can image SATA to SATA, then just do a reverse swap (converting a native SATA drive to be USB or rig up a perfectly good USB drive to be SATA for this part). Then it's decrypting from a perfectly good drive over USB rather than struggling with bad sectors. Had to do this sort of thing back before DE could decrypt on the fly.