Buffalo USB Bridge

[daRecoM]

Good day,

I've got this rather old Buffalo 2.5' external HDD from a client, the HDD is indeed in bad shape though we managed to read quite a bit of the sectors.

I've tried connect the donor drive with the USB bridge attached (the controller board), to one of our system here, the system doesn't seem to detect anything at all.

Now I suspect something is not right with the USB bridge (not 100% sure though), I don't seem to recognize the ROM chip (or whether there is one)

It will be very much appreciated if anyone here could help please

Thanks in advance.

Best regards
Darecom

[daRecoM]

Sorry, forgot to attach the snapshots of the controller board earlier.

There you go

Attachments

[pcimage]

Pretty sure that isn’t an encrypting controller. So no real need to use the bridge board.

[einstein9]

Pretty sure that isn’t an encrypting controller. So no real need to use the bridge board.

It depends Sean

I know 2 types of the old model (old usb)

by looking @ the end (last sectors) you will know which one is it.

[mr_spokk]

@Sean +1
@einstein9 1608L does not encrypt

[einstein9]

@Sean +1
@einstein9 1608L does not encrypt

Never trust the CLIENT. and double check (I do listen to them, but important to believe on what they say/present)

[rogfanther]

Now I suspect something is not right with the USB bridge (not 100% sure though), I don't seem to recognize the ROM chip (or whether there is one)

Well, first give it a good cleaning , then try again. It seems to have some corrosion alongside the dirt.

Other than that, if you managed to read a lot of the disk, what does DMDE shows, for example ? And can you post the dump of the last sectors, as @einstein9 suggested ?

[daRecoM]

Good day,

@pcimage & @rogfanther Thanks so much for your advise.

@einstein9 if I've done correctly, there's nothing in the last sector. Please find attached screenshot

The surface of the disk is pretty bad, I'm scanning the imaged drive now (without the USB bridge)

Again guys, thank you so much for your help, appreciated that.

Attachments

[rogfanther]

I agree with the others, both in that the bridge would not encrypt, and also about the client not telling everything.

Let´s start from the beginning.

What is the hard disk brand/model, how does it behave when connected to the sata port of a computer ?

How did you image it, and which were the results ( like, number of retrieved sectors x unreadable sectores ) . Any firmeware manipulation was necessary ?

Depending on the amount of things "not read", it will be hard to identify filesystems or recover bigger files. Maybe some head swap will be necessary. But first we need information about the hard disk and its behaviour.