PC-3000 Forum

hi all

i have meny WD Smartware

for ex:wd3200bmvv-11a9ms0

meida protected can take data cant formate it


any one know how i can solve the problem?

thanks

"Write Protected" error. Either you need to enter correctly smartware key, or smartware / key is damaged

Agree with you here

Masterkey can be found in many places to recover as well

einstein9, can you shed some more light on this "master key" --> this is the first I've heard about it. Do you mean a master key for the 1 sector at the very end of the drive (this would be cool)? Or do you mean a "master key" as an image of the smartware partition?

"Master Key" refers to the primary encryption/decryption key located at a specific sector toward the end of the drive.

If key is lost, data is encrypted with no decryption key for decryption - effectively data remains encrypted permanently with no possibility to decrypt. however, in some specific cases there are copies of the key stored in various locations, such as in a specific SA module.

With regard to active Smartware password, this simply puts the key through a Secure hash Algorithm (SHA) meaning only when correct password is entered key becomes accessible for decryption.

"effectively data remains encrypted permanently with no possibility to decrypt"

Interesting… I thought "master key" meant "skeleton key." That is: one "key" that would work for all drives. I understand now, "Masterkey can be found in many places to recover as well" means the "master key" for that specific drive can be found in an SA module on the same drive.

Is the exact module a secret (that you don't want to share?) or could it just be anywhere in the SA?

Thanks for your information AJ!

AJ2008 wrote:"Master Key" refers to the primary encryption/decryption key located at a specific sector toward the end of the drive.

If key is lost, data is encrypted with no decryption key for decryption - effectively data remains encrypted permanently with no possibility to decrypt. however, in some specific cases there are copies of the key stored in various locations, such as in a specific SA module.

With regard to active Smartware password, this simply puts the key through a Secure hash Algorithm (SHA) meaning only when correct password is entered key becomes accessible for decryption.

Yup

Hi all,

I am having Issue with one of these drives also.
Customer said they never put a password on it, there is no password hint.
I have bypassed USB and read all modules, and all seems fine, but drive sectors do look encrypted for sure.

Is there any other issue, like PCB that could cause a drive to suddenly think it has a password on it? is this the onthefly encryption key corruption even though there was no password set?.


On a different note, I saw this "solution" to WD passport drives on hddguru, I understand that is a public forum and you have invested allot of time to get this "solution' to work and even went to the trouble of posting pics and videos of it working.

My point is, are we all not in a private forum here? and we all are paying customers of ACE products? At the end of the day working towards the same goal of getting data back for customers?

Why must everything be a secret? where I come from everyone helps everyone else out, even if they are the competitor.
Maybe I am just stupid but I think doing things for the greater good for everyone is the right thing to do.

I'm not saying give me the solution, just making a comment

Thanks
Jason

Here is another question that might be related. Okay, so for 2.5 inch drives the PCB and USB controller along with encryption chip are all in one.

How about the 3.5 inch drives that have a SEPARATE HDD PCB and usb controller with encryption chip ? Will any USB controller from same family work since the key is stored in HDD SURFACE ? I'm assuming that the key for these drives is not stored on SA since it's not an "all-in-one" drive... am i correct ? Or does that USB controller for the 3.5 inch drives has a "techno" access to the drive and writes information about new key to SA MOD ? It would be nice for anybody or ACE staff to give us more info about this. As well as KEY location and structure, if possible.

EDIT: I just saw this ... http://forum.hddguru.com/for-those-who- ... 21584.html

Really ? Reverse engineering the unlock.exe gives you access without knowing password ? Are WD Engineers complete fail ?

I have a drive here that probably fits this scenario.
The customer said it started automatically formatting itself, and they stopped it at some point.
I imagine they probably didn't pay attention and told it start to reformat when prompted (due to drive flakiness due to bad sectors).

It's a WD 2TB mybook. Cloned with just 91 bad sectors, all of which are somewhere between sectors 1,000,000 - 10,000,000.
The last million+ sectors are perfect, but using orig usb bridge, and same size drive for clone, it doesn't mount like normal, so I guess it needs a password. When I choose to auto-open with smartware it prompts for a password immediately, as it does also when I click on unlock.exe, but has no hints, and none of the passwords they thought it could be work. (They don't think they ever chose a password).
DR/Winhex Software is not able to access any sectors and access is denied.

There has been some mention of user selected passwords vs. master/default password.... I wonder if a master password would work for this case, if the user never actually chose a password, and instead that the issue is due to the partial format...which... I wonder if affects/changes the 1st decryption key? I really haven't studied the exact process of these, and have usually got away with simply reusing the orig or same chip usb bridge.

I can respect the work it took to develop a solution that might work for this (not sure since supposedly the drive was started to be reformatted).
How much would someone with a solution charge if I was to send the customer drive to you, or how can we present a possible solution for customers with cases like this?
PM me, or i'm sure there are others who are also curious...