Hello,
Over the years I have accumilated in excess of eighty Seagate drives from X-BOX consoles which have been upgraded. I also have a similar number of laptop hard drives. I have the opportunity to obtain close to 500 additional XBOX drives.

All of the Seagate drives from the XBOX consoles are password locked and the majority of the laptop drives (90%) are password locked, with the remainder suffering from clonking etc.

Concentrating just on the password issue, would a PC-3000 be suitable for reading out the passwords, and thus enabling the drives to be unlocked?

I believe it is, although can't confirm that it will work with all drives (Hitachi, IBM, Fujitsu, Seagate etc). Can anybody confirm that the PC-3000 will remove passwords from these drives?

And finally, does anybody have any experiences (good or bad) from purchasing the PC-3000 unit from China? It will be the PC-3000 ISA board as opposed to the PCI one.

Best Regards,
Roger

The password developed by hard disks is an ATA feature and can be solved by a software or a hardware and software that can read this feature from a hard disk. Every manufactur has a different way to work with the password feature, so you will need a software or hardware that can read the hard disk that you have.
For the new Seagates and for the hard disks with LBA 48, the options in the market are PC3000 PCI version and HRT 2.0.
IMHO you can buy both in china , since you look for the resellers of ACELAB and BVG-GROUP, the others will sell you a hacked version of this systems and I do not know if they are good or not. To say something about them I should buy them first and test them, after this I can say if they work or not. But untill now we do not have intention in buy them.
We have the originals systems only.
Go to the website of Acelab and of HRT and look for the hard disks that they can handle, remember that ACELAB has 2 systems one ISA and other PCI.

As far as I know, PC3000 can unlock any hard drive (laptop or desktop) with one condition only. It will erase all the data on the drive. So, if you don't care about the data - PC3K can do what you are looking for.

Regarding purchasing PC3K from China - by all means. You can buy it. The only problem is that you will end up with a cracked version of pc3000 which won't be of any use to you. Thanks to our partners who told me not to "waste" money on chinese cracked product.

You can buy PC3000 either from Acelab or from Canada ACEDRE, depending on where you live.

Hi,
Here you will find who is the Acelab's dealers:
http://www.acelab.ru/products/pc-en/dealers.html
To Tony
Can you tell us _ (more) _ about your experience with PC3000 and any notebook hard disks ?
Can you tell us what was the laptop hard disk that we can take the password using the PC3000; even when we will loose the data ?
I have here to ilustrate ( and I can put a doc with pictures and all expalnation in english to help others ) a 2.5 hard disk that we can use to test, since you tell us what are the steps, and I will do.
I think that everybody here in this forum will be very happy in learn with your experience. ( I will be, for sure )

Will do! Just give me some time (till weekend) please.

pc3000 is much better than you describe - even some chinese versions,
I think, will do better than this.

Just do some reading of IBM drive manuals - they, and others describe how the ATA standard implements security (passwords, master and user at high and maximum levels)

pc3000 intends to help the user remove the password and keep the data,
although it does not do all drives - like Hitachi-IBM.

Hi horseman,

There is quite a lot written (search) about x-box and password removal or recovery - it seems pretty easy to crack the drive pw on x-box machines.
Although I have not tried this myself with an x-box.
I think experts-exchange have some articles.

Sucsess !

I was unaware that the Chinese sellers are offering cracked items - the price was in the region of £460 GPB which led me to believe it would be genuine.

I shall await the arrival of the PC-3000 and report back as to if there are any problems with these Chinese versions as others have suggested as the dealer listed above (on the Ace Lab page) wasn't the supplier.

There is much conflicting info as to what drives this is going to be compatible with - my understanding from other sources was that the PC-3000 would allow the password to be read from a maintenance cylinder in plaintext and then used to unlock the drive, thus not needing to rewrite any of the drive parameters or otherwise write to the drive. This isn't an issue, although is a daunting thought as I believe the Secruity Erase Unit command takes a number of hours per drive (I will have several hundred drives to unlock!)

I've a wide assortment of drives thus will report back on what brands and models are compatible once the PC-3000 has arrived.

Many thanks for all of your advise - it's unfortunate that I didn't come across all of the replies until after I'd ordered this presumably 'cracked' Chinese board.

Best Regards,
Roger

I do not suggest, this is what we will have from Acelab, they have only 2 dealers.
Seams to me that you are suggesting something.
And I do not saw comments saying or suggesting that the chinese version do not work, I saw some coments about support and upgrades.
But you can help many persons here, including myself. Since you receive the PC3000 you could use it and then you could put here what happens, and even your impression. And for this I will say thanks very much to you.

If you need 2.5" password recovery experience use Fujitsu or Toshiba drives and right Acelab tool.....

_________________
best regards, vi, http://pchdd.narod.ru

Hello _vi_ , why you allways say half of the instruction ?
Many guys here know you, so they ( and me ) know what you can do.
If you want to help say all the instruction.
Fujistus 2.5 you can use .........
Toshiba 2.5 you can use .........
You could give us a help in this matter.

Hm, i think it's simple:

1. Everyone who we see here only once - don't have experience to help themself.

2. Everyone who we see here many times - do it for money, isn't it? So why we see only freebies?

It's also stupid give "real" info in public place...

_________________
best regards, vi, http://pchdd.narod.ru

Thank you for your answer.
Now everyone here will understand, why is so hard to have help.
Sometimes I think that i will never learn the right words.

So guys, lessons about Password and PC3000.... next time, maybe ?

PC3000 really can read all disk passwords( master and user at high and maximum levels ),I believe pc3k can read all desktop harddisk driver passwords ,but I doubt it can read the harddisk password of notebook .

"It's also stupid give "real" info in public place..."

Disagree, sorry. Most of you are gurus for me, but only things I know are from reading (here and not), studying and testing by myself. And thanks to holy people who helped me a bit. Sometimes a little help to start is needed, I mean, no to a "step by step instruction for dummies" but a start point to explore by yourself, working hard, it is good.

What answer you need, fair or politically correct?

Before say "right words" please tell as how much $$ you get from unlocking 2.5" drive and what equipment you already buy?

why i think you don't buy anything???

ps Finding "RIGHT WORDS" - possible, but what words you find depends on you

Posted 26/1/2005, 15:56:

ps2: you need lesson? Well, run pc3k util for 2.5" fujitsu and choose "remove password" from menu. any troubles?

_________________
best regards, vi, http://pchdd.narod.ru

I never said , I do not know how to fix passowords problems.
Try to read all msgs that has something about passwords and you will see that I already put here that I do not need the answer, for this queston, sorry...
About what you saying that I do not buy any tools, you are right. I'm not the owner of the company that I'm working now. And here they have all Russians stuffs, sorry again they do not both your utility, so the I can say almost all russian utilities.
About the "right words" - IMHO you are in same category that everyone that I already saw here - you need to lear english, so , maybe you will understand what is wrote in messages.
Sorry again, but I know you and I never expecte nothing different from what I saw here, you are the same since I saw your first msg, and was not here.
You are mad with life, maybe your dream could be - work with Leo in Softjoy. why not ?

Hi PijoMax,

Here where I work some people (who need data often) come and visit.

Some guys just want to see what the NAME of the program you using
and then they off to Google. One guy just see what I use for D2D and off he goes to google and uses it himself - before he was just using ER.
This slip-up by my side cost me $10,000.00 per year in work he can now do himself.

Also much information people get has been posted on Russian forums
and in turn this information was obtained from some guru who did not want to see his knowledge spread all over.

Now all the real gurus lay back and don't often visit forums because they like to help, but also they in the business of making a living which needs money.

I can think of a solution :

Buy the software and those who own the software can share experiences and resources.


It really is stupid to give real information in the public domain.

Once you become the expert for sure you will not share your knowledge here.

I'm not a guru, but not a newbie. If all humankind will think like you, what progress there will be? I found my way to do this job, just working. But, yes, some of you helped a little, directly or only reading your posts... Are you absolutely sure you are a real self made man ? Did you stay in your cave years and years looking into HDs? Or have you read somewhere, bought something, found that stupid and unuseful tool, tried that tool cracked before buy, having so a precious help in what you are now ? A DR expert ? In the truth, I cannot say this. If you can, up my hat.

If you buy pc3k, is the help from them absolutely helpful 100% ?

I mean, we are playing with very strange matter, any disk could be a different case, and investigating we can understand better... I am asking (sometimes) only a little "kick" to be on right way. We are in different country, and different market. If I help you, have I a loss ? You can say how to discriminate... I agree. But from do not ask, and ask, I prefer to ask. If an help come, welcome. You will earn good wine. Probably because I have little to loose...

In any case, I appreciate you and other guys for passing time here.

Hi all.
Seams to me that i need to say somethings here, before I start to see ( msgs) things that I don't want and that noone need.
First I agree with _vi_ not 100% but he has some reason.
I really like to do some jokes, and sometimes I agree that my jokes goes on, and this is life, and life is not easy.
fujimax, thats seams to me that works in South America, has reasons too.
And you has your point of view that I respect, but you need to read more the msgs that are wrotten here. You need to understand that Data Recovery is not an academic research this is business and people do it to live. Has many guys here that are serious, but has a lot of "eagles" and this are very bad for business, and the business is all about. You want to learn, I want to learn ( I really need to learn more ) fujimax and some others also want to learn, but we are not 100% of this foruns.
In russian's forums that talks about hard disks ( I know 4 ) has good people and also has bad people, and good russians professionals has bad experiences with foruns, so they do not teach what they know anymore and I respect them.
I have a time to spend ( free time ) all days and this time I'm using it here, sometimes to see what people are thinking and doing in Data Recovery and Repair, and sometimes ( sorry all, for this ) for fun. Here is a nice place for fun, I already put a msg here about this matter.
But we have here many problems and the most crucial is the language.

Hi,

PC3k is ok for password removal and extraction but only works on some drives. But if true PC3k has broken many data recovery companies who invest in their own research. Can take 3-4 months to research code and be in front of other data recovery companies... Remember before PC3k and Fujitsu problems? now you can buy this for $50!!!! Maxtor problems... now you can buy this $250! All details taken from PC3k!!!!!!!!! We have lost $$$$$$$$$$$$ becuase of this and Acelab have made $$$$$ from it... not a good balance! people will keep what secrets they have in their own black box becuase this pays for their food, house, children.
just my opinion Guru shoot me if you wish.. but some people will understand