PC-3000 Forum

We got this drive in with firmware corruption. It's a new model (WD5000LMCW-11T31S1) with REDFIN controller and a 88i4748 CPU version (PCB: 2060-800038-000 REV P1). We get full access (without blocking SA or module 2 or 30). We soldered a terminal connector on to get SA access and ran "Slow fix" and manually fixed module 02. In HDD ID "locked" and "SED" were both unchecked by default.

But, the sectors are encrypted and "Decrypt" in Sector Edit cannot find any encryption key. I don't see a key in either "key" module, but I see something at the end of the drive which looks like an encrypted key. That is: there is no "WD" or "SiNE" type of header, but there is a random sector towards the end of the drive that contains data (surrounded by sectors with 00000's). A RAW DE scan shows no files. After connecting to a PC, WD Smartware software shows the drive as "0%" used and "Unlocked." All sectors show "E5" (unreadable) in R-Studio. Deepspar USB addon can see drive ID, but no sectors are readable.

Because it's worked in the past with similar symptoms, we tried "checking" the SED option in Edit HDD ID and the sectors do not change (and "decrypt" still doesn't work).

This is a very strange case and I wonder if this drive uses some new kind of encryption? Any ideas how to decrypt this drive?
Thanks,
Brian

Brian Sir ,
You Swapped Board To SATA or Tapped SATA Lines Or Used Com Port .Do you have Copy of untouched modules . You said you get full SA access without any sa blocking .even if you do you should block SA load dir and loader into ram ,Then Try What You Did . Your Slow Fix Did Not Help You That you had to manually edit Mod 02 ,What did you do in mod 02 ? . you said firmware corruption [ what was wrong in firmware ? ] .Might be ace lab tool cannot understand this encryption yet ask roman and company

FYI... case solved using donor SATA PCB. Seems PCB WAS the issue, data wasn't readable via USB port. Could have also had "slow" problems, fw issues.

@Amarbir: used the method of soldering to seagate terminal adatper.