Yep, HP used that chipset.
Reallymine may work as it is pretty much the same thing.

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Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Save your money. Instead of paying Roberto, try doing it yourself:

https://github.com/themaddoctor/linux-mybook-tools

From the author: "tools for opening some encrypted WD My Book drives in linux".
The tool does not seem to be able to decrypt My Passport clones/images outside the native "My Passport environment", hence why the author recommends other ways (e.g. reallymine).

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Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

You completely misunderstand it without even looking at it. It is for decrypting the drives after the SATA-USB bridge card is removed. Applies to the case that we are discussing now. It does not use the WD software. It uses command-line tools to read the keyblock and extract the key from it. Then it uses cryptsetup to REPLACE the WD software, so that the drive is seen by the OS as a decrypted drive.

To do Passport drives with linux-mybook-tools, the drive must be converted to SATA, or the encryption chip must be bypassed. But it can.

Linux-mybook-tools is for SATA drives after the bridge card is removed. WD software is not used.

I don't know how you two are coming to those conclusions, unless you work for Roberto and want people to send him money.

It was a genuine misunderstanding. Spildit's forum, a "Platform for OPEN research on Data Recovery", openly promotes reallymine and your own tool:

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1488&p=15122#p14993

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Cool.

Roberto charges too much, so I get a little edgy when anyone talks about him.

A couple months ago, someone told me Roberto quoted 500€.

Well, we don´t know the full situation, details of the case, how much the hdd was already botched from the user trying to fix, etc.

I went back and looked at the emails. It was 550€ to recover a forgotten password on a MyBook and (I assume) recover the key. This quote was to a professional who would do the decryption and data recovery with the key. To me, 550€ seems like a lot for a doing a brute-force attack on one password. I told him I'd do it for 100, but his client pulled out by then.

Well, I may be the one who reported a 500€ quote for the decryption of a forgotten password encrypting a WD My Passport drive, as exposed in this post...
Mr. Kaeding (who was very quick to reply, concise yet clear and thorough in his explanations, taking great care to stress the important little details of the procedure which someone unexperienced may overlook and which can greatly affect the outcome) explained to me that he knew how to exploit some security weaknesses in the key generation for some of the encryption chips used in those drives' controlers, which bypasses the requirement for a brute-force decryption (but, again, it doesn't work with all chips). I could only provide remote assistance for the decryption / extraction, based on Mr. Kaeding's instructions, with the decryption key he would hopefully be able to recover, and since the potential client, who had a 200€ budget for the whole thing (I was fine with that and Mr. Kaeding as well), wasn't confident enough to perform the required USB to SATA conversion himself, he prefered to give up, saying that it had been three years since the drive was inaccessible and it could wait some more (at this rate, it could wait until the very end of the guy's own shelf-life !... I tried to tell him that he was unlikely to find a better opportunity later on, considering how rare that particular type of service is around here, to no avail).
I also told about Mr. Kaeding to someone who posted a request here for a similar situation and had been in contact with Roberto, then a few days later I asked that person how his situation had evolved, and he replied among other things that Roberto's quote was now 550€, so the above figure must come from that person. The guy chose to go through with it anyway, since Roberto could take care of the whole procedure, while Mr. Kaeding only proposed to deal with the software part, albeit for a significantly cheaper fee.
Hope that clarifies, without disclosing too many “industrial secrets” nor offending any involved party...

Am I one of "the two"?

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Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

and


Doesn´t seem to me that both parties offer the same services then.

@rogfanther

In this particular case, no. But without the hardware part (which seems “relatively” easy in comparison) the pricing would have been (I guess) similar, “in the same ballpark”.


@Spildit

Indeed, in this case, noone can complain. It's just that it seems very difficult to get a clear and complete information about the possible options for such a very specific task — which is rare, but not to the point that only one person in the world can perform it, as someone wrote to me... That is a bit disingenuous, and I can understand Mr. Kaeding's “edginess”.



I may be wrong, but I don't think that even the almighty PC-3000 DE can decrypt such a drive without the user-defined password. (Or maybe by performing a brute-force decryption by itself ?)

Really do not agree. I made a bad solder job ( used wrong wire ) on one of this conversions, and without the necessary/correct tools and supplies, would have destroyed the pcb traces due to working with a mega-sized soldering iron. Then replacing the board with another, and transferring the adaptives *from inside Marvel MCU* would be hard and cost a lot more.

So, as many other things, it is easy when one knows how and has the necessary tools/ experience. Not everyone knows or has that. Example ? I know how an apendicectomy is done, can even see the pictures from training books in my mind. Do I think I am able to do it ? No. Would I expect good results if trying to do it ? Also not.

Good point...
What I meant was : I got a 500€ quote for the software part only, and then that other person reported a 550€ quote for the complete hardware + software job, so I figured that the software part was by far the most costly / costliest, whatever, the part which brought the most buck for the bang.
Also, the USB to SATA conversion procedure is explained in several threads on this forum to relatively unexperienced persons with basic equipment willing to attempt a DIY recovery, with no particular warnings about the difficulty or the possible hazards with inadequate tools.

About the prices ; we don´t know how the conversations went, what was discussed, and also what either part knew or thought or considered about the specific job. If one can find other more suitable offer, then very good. It is not good when there is just one supplier of a thing or a service.

About the procedure : Apendicectomy is also explained in a lot of places. It is up to someone to understand what he is getting into, not do a monstrous mess then try to blame others for not having advised him. We are talking to adults here, not children.

And it is of little use to have a lot of warnings : people are still using 7200.11 commands blindly in 7200.12 and newer drives, even if the same post they reference states clearly that it should not be used. Human beings see what they want and ignore the rest.

Yes, but for instance noone here will describe the head-stack-assembly replacement procedure to a novice with no proper equipment asking if it's possible to fix a HDD with obvious defective heads issue. There are degrees of difficulty and/or risk, some things can be attempted with reasonable odds of success, some cannot. I myself asked about the possibity of attempting a HSA replacement for one of my own drives which does not contain data worthy enough to justify the cost of a professional service (which I couldn't afford currently anyway) ; I was replied, in a nutshell : save the money or forget about it. I mentioned for instance Scott Moulton's videos which describe certains aspects of advanced recovery procedures and was frowned upon because, apparently, among professional DR circles, just mentioning that guy's name seems to convey bad vibrations — precisely because he talks about those things in public conferences. So, apparently, not all information should be made freely accessible to the general public, right ? I haven't searched (not really what I wanna see right now ), but I'd be surprised if there were apendicectomy video tutorials on YouTube for instance... (if someone tries to upload one, it will probably be reported for removal by a surgeon or even a medical student, not just because it could harm the profession's overall income but because it might kill someone). And if there are such videos on serious medical websites, there must be a conspicuous disclaimer saying : “this should never be attempted by anyone without proper medical training, blah blah blah...” So, knowledgeable people do have a responsibility in the kind of information they choose to disclose, be it publicly, or to individuals, on a case-by-case basis, depending on the perceived knowledge level of each concerned person in the particular field in question and his/her general level of carefulness and common sense, with the proper warnings when necessary.
The distinction children / adults seems irrelevant to me. Some smart, wise and well-trained children can perform fairly advanced tasks in full autonomy and stay extremely cautious about the important details and the risks they entail, while many adults will stay stupid their entire life with no remedy on sight.
“The maturity of man—that means, to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play.” (Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond good and evil)



Well, it may be true as a general observation, but it sure won't get any better if those who do know their stuff neglect to mention the important details altogether ! (Hence why I stressed above that I very much appreciated how Mr. Kaeding did care to mention such details, some I already knew, some I didn't, like the fact that just connecting a drive on Windows could mess up with the MBR enough to impede such a recovery procedure on en encrypted drive.)

In many places it is described how to do head stack replacement. And if just asking about it, people will answer describing the general ways of it. As each case changes with tools available and other situations, it doesn´t have only one way.

People are not very keen to explain those because, when done wrong, it will turn an easy thing into a nightmare for the professional trying to clean the mess after. A botched pcb can be replaced ( unless one loses the rom chip, and even in some cases it can be recovered ) . But if someone scratches all over the disks when trying to do head replacement in the kitchen sink things get much worse. And it will be only then that the "destroyer" will confess that the drive belonged to a customer and has/had important data that needed to be recovered.

The problem with Scott Moulton is that he makes it look too simple, and that gives courage to those that would try to learn in customer´s drives. Then if we recuse to work on a drive already fully messed up, then people treats us as the bad people.

For your reasoning, we should also block the access to medicine books in library, right, because they contain the "dangerous" information.

This :
describe correctly the situation that everybody is telling you.

In the case of internet written comunication, I would make distinction between "children" and "adults" based on the level of knowledge, good judgment, smarts and prudence, more than on age.

And about that " just connecting to a windows machine ", I really do not believe it. It seems to me more like a way to avoid someone to mess with a drive without making them feeling bad. But I won´t dismiss it completely before doing tests. It is already on my to-do list, problem it is that said list seems to only get bigger, not smaller.