SUCCESS!!

Played with Reallymine a bit more and got some help from the devs.
Details here.

https://github.com/andlabs/reallymine/issues/5

Basically pointed reallymine to the 300GB image created with DDRescue and it decrypted the data in a few hours.
Data looks OK, but it's not my data so the owner will have to confirm if everything is there.

Start to finish, this was a fairly easy process.
It just took a long time to find the right steps.

If there's interest, I could make a tutorial of the process from start to finish

Thanks goes out to everyone who helped, especially fzabkar, drHDD, and Martin.
This was a great learning experience and everyone's advice and knowledge helped me inch closer to success.

Thanks again everybody

A tutorial would be great. Thanks in advance.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

****Disclaimer****
This was done on a HD that had no other issues than a broken USB interface.
If your HD is a different model or the USB portion of the PCB can be fixed, this method may not apply.


SATA Conversion

Remove the PCB from the HD.

Decided to use a cut up SATA data cable and use the SATA connector off a dead HD for power.
Looking back it would have been easier to just wire the power straight to a PC power supply.



There are 2 groups of 4 pads on the PCB that can be used for power.
Any of the four will do.
We want the 5v positive line and ground (com).
Solder a wire from 1 of the 4 pads to pins 7,8, and 9 for positive and ground to 10,11,12.
Below is a pic from a different HD but the power pads are in the same location.




Next the data lines.

Strip the cut SATA data cable.
There are 4 insulated wires and 3 bare ground wires.



Twist all the ground wires together and solder them to the same ground pad where the SATA power connector is.
Used some kapton tape to keep the ground wires from touching anything else on the PCB.
Doesn’t have to be kapton tape just what I had on hand.

Use a multimeter to determine which data wires go to which pins on the SATA connector.

Run the following lines to the vias for E71, E72, E73, and E74
You should be able to poke the stripped SATA wires through the PCB and bend them over on the other side to temporarily hold them in place.

E71 = A+ or pin 2
E72 = A- or pin 4
E73 = B- or pin 5
E74 = B+ or pin 6

Solder the wires to the vias. Less is more here. It won’t take more than second on each via with a hot soldering iron and small amount of solder to attach them into place.



Use a multimeter again to verify that the pins on the SATA connector has continuity to the via on the other side of the board.

Bend any excess wire away from any other trace or component on the PCB, then cut as short as possible.

Remove the capacitors.
Not much to say about this step since the capacitors that need to be removed were already missing when I got this drive. Shouldn’t take much effort. Add some flux or a glob of solder and remove C13,C18,C31,C33 with a soldering iron and some tweezers. Try not to loose them. These components are very small. Some kind of magnification will help here.



Double check your connections with a meter again in case something heated up and came loose.
With the caps removed you can use their leftover pads as points of continuity.

Re-attach the PCB to the HD.
Connect SATA data cable to the MOBO of your PC and power to your PCs power supply.

Fire up your PC and get into the BIOS and double check that your drive is detected.
If not, power down the PC, remove the PCB and double check all your connections with a multimeter again.

Here's my finished mod. It's ugly but it works.



Next is Software:

Using Ubuntu for this.
Not because it’s better, but because most people are familiar with Ubuntu.
Any Linux based OS should work as long as you get a 64bit version.
Downloaded the following iso and created a bootable DVD.

http://mirror.pnl.gov/releases/16.04.1/ ... -amd64.iso

Connected the SATA converted WD3200MBVV and a 2TB HD for data storage to my PC.
Fired up the PC and booted to to the Ubuntu DVD.

Open Disks and find info for for both HDs and mount 2TB HD.
Note that for my system the WD3200MBVV is /dev/sdc and the 2TB HD is /dev/sdb1

When my 2TB is mounted by clicking on the play button it location is /media/ubuntu/584D906C6D0674FF
Don't mount or try to mount the SATA converted HD.




Next we need Reallymine.
Open Firefox and download it here.

https://github.com/andlabs/reallymine/r ... inux-amd64

By default, Firefox saves the file to Downloads.
Open the file browser, right click reallymine-linux-amd64 and open the file properties.
Next under the permissions tab check the box to make reallymine executable.



Now open the Terminal.
By default you are put into your Home directory.
Type ls to confirm this.
Type cd Downloads to change directory to Downloads (note upper and lower case matters)
Next type ls to confirm that reallymine-linux-amd64 is there.

Next you need to use the info from Disks to run reallymine.

Syntax to run reallymine
sudo ./reallymine-linux-amd64 /dev/”your-encrypted-HD” /media/ubuntu/”your-mounted-data-HD”/”folder-on-your-data-HD”/whaterver-you-want.img

My example:
sudo ./reallymine-linux-amd64 /dev/sdc /media/ubuntu/584D906C6D0674FF/decryptmyHD.img



If it works reallymine will run and start decrypting the HD and save it to the image file you specified.



Now you have a decrypted image of you HD.
Create a new directory on your data drive to mount the image onto.

Syntax:
sudo mkdir /media/ubuntu/"your-data-HD"/"whatever-you-want-folder"

My example:
sudo mkdir /media/ubuntu/584D906C6D0674FF/DataCopy



Now you need to mount the image.
Before you can do that you’ll need some info from fdisk.

Go back to the terminal and point fdisk at your new decrypted image

Syntax for fdisk:
sudo fdisk -l /media/ubuntu/”path to you decrypted image file”

My example:
sudo fdisk -l /media/ubuntu/584D906C6D0674FF/decryptmyHD.img



Now you need to take the start # and multiply it with the sector size.



Take that number back to the Terminal and mount the decrypted image.

Syntax for mount:
sudo mount -o loop,offset="your-offset" /media/ubuntu/"your-data-HD"/"decryptedHD".img /media/ubuntu/"your-data-HD"/"folder-you-just-created"

My Example:
sudo mount -o loop,offset=1048576 /media/ubuntu/584D906C6D0674FF/decryptmyHD.img /media/ubuntu/584D906C6D0674FF/DataCopy/



Now the image will open in the file explorer and you will see all your files.

You could now simply copy you files out to another folder or ext HD, but I did one more thing that is purely optional.

Beyond Compare
I use this app for large data copies when I want to be 100% sure everything copied.
You can compare 2 folders and have it copy from one side to the other.
During the copy BeyondCompare is checking that files in both folders are equal and will give you an error if something is not.

Too many times I've copied data in Windows, OSX, and Linux only to have the file browser crash or error out leaving me to start all over not knowing where it left off.

Open Firefox and grab the linux 64bit version here.

http://www.scootersoftware.com/bcompare ... _64.tar.gz
Note** They have a deb for Ubuntu but I never got it to install correctly.

Open the Terminal again and cd to the Downloads folder.
ls to confirm that the bcompare file is there.
Extract the installer.

sudo tar zxfv bcompare-4.1.8.21575.x86_64.tar.gz



cd into the new bcompare folder and run the installer.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~/Downloads/bcompare-4.1.8.21575$ sudo ./install.sh

Hit enter again at the install prefix? [/usr] prompt

The installer gives an error about a missing folder but it installs OK.




Run bcompare.



Now choose folder compare.



You can put /media/ubuntu in both left and right address fields to get started.
Find your data drive and right-click the DataCopy folder (mounted decrypted image) to set as the base folder on one side.
(Sorry about the pics quality, had to use my phone since I could not take screenshots while right clicking)



On the other side find you data drive, set as the base folder and right click again to create a new folder to copy the data out of the mounted image into.




Select all the files on one side, right click and choose copy to the right.




Click Start and Beyond Compare will now copy the folders and files to your new folder.



Then you can take that folder and copy/move it anywhere you want without needing to mount the image again.

And that's it.
Simple right?!?!?!
Honestly I think it took longer to write this tutorial than recover the actual data.
Hope this helps somebody down the line.

Thanks again to everyone who helped.

Thanks very much for this great tutorial! It is much appreciated.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

this application can decrypt data for my passport ultra for jm20339 ?

I get to the point where Im asked for a pw (drive was not pw protected)

Any ideas? Help!