@fzabkar: You are the best.(or the beast?)

1)i soldered pin number 6 of the flash, as shown in the following picture, to a wire, disconnecting the flash's pin from PCB.
2)i soldered a wire to the PCB near pin 6







3)i connected the hard disk with adapter to usb port of my pc.
4)i opened the utility "Apollo 1607E Firmware Updater v2.018-v2.019 (1.0.8.6).exe" (annexed to this post)
5)i selected "continue"
6)i selected "Accept" to license agreement
7) i connected both wires between them (by this way the flash becomes writable)
then i pressed "update firmware"
9) The utility told me "Update SUCCESSFULL!!"
10) i disconnected the usb cable and reconnected it, and now the hard disk is recognized as WD passport device.
You can see in the following picture as it is recognized.



11) From WD website i downloaded the tool "WD SmartWare Virtual CD Manager for Windows Web Release-v1.0.8.3.exe" (annexed to this post)

12) i used the tool, following the onscreen instructions. At the end i disconnected and reconnected the usb device.

Now i can see a unique usb hard disk. The problem is solved.



Thank you.
BR
Gaucho

p.s.:i think this task had 0,1% probability of success. w fzabkar. w me.

p.p.s.: now you can solder again the pin number 6 and remove the wires.

Could someone of the ADMINISTRATORS write on the title of this 3ad the keyworld [SOLVED] ?

ciao.

_________________
imagination is more important than knowledge.

I'm glad I found this post and that you found a cure for that HP disease.

But mine is a 2TB simplesave. It's a WDC WD20EADS-00W (WD Caviar green) hard-drive setup on a different board and much smaller than the one you have. I don't have a cam to show a pic and my scanner is setup on the PC that is running Darik's Boot'n'Nuke (DBAN) for a few more couple of days now. Soldering is not the problem for me, it's the visual: I would need to magnify that thing 50x cause it's that small and much 8x more circuits than yours (it's on a 2x2½ inch board) and then know what and where to solder (it's really not the same board order).

I wanna throw away that board since it is the main cause for this trauma. For now I wanna run that HDD on the internal connection (if I understood earlier post and some other forums, that drive is suppose to work as itself, as a HDD, without that board). Maybe latter in an external twin HDD container (if I'm successful with that drive, I'll get an other one since it was only 99$ Any 2TB sells for 200$ around here, even mail-ordered, because of Quebec-squid's taxes.

Peace
Ghis

Hello! I'm new to the site; but, it seems absolutely amazing. You folks actually get deep into the roots of problems! All of the other sites I've looked at pertaining to the HP Simplesave Virtual CD led nowhere.

But now I have a new question! I bought a 500gig HP Simplesave; however, I removed the WD drive inside and stuck it in a laptop (for more space). It works like a charm. Now I want to take the old laptop internal and put it in the Simplesave case. The problem is it won't recognize the drive when I connect it through USB!

The drive is a Toshiba HDD2D30. When I connect it to the INITIO adapter and then to the computer, only the Virtual CD pops up. I've tried formatting it (FAT32 and NTFS) but that did not help.

Any ideas would be very much appreciated!

-gok

gaucho, Please help me with how to disassemble outer case of the HP SD320a USB drive. I found two screws under the little feet and I removed them but not wanting to break the case I am stumped.

Larry L
N0ORMRadio@gmail.com

Hi Larry, so the case is simple, and you may have already found the answer. So for everyone else that may be reading this,

1) Remove the two small screws near the front under the feet.
2) Use some type of screw driver to gently pry the case apart on one side. There are three plastic clips on either side that are holding the device together.
3) Once one side has been opened, the two halves just fold apart.

I'll post pictures soon. I'm actually just trying all of this today.

I did notice (and this may have been explained on the very thorough thread) that using gparted I see the entire 500MByte hard drive. There is no VCD area. I know the thought on this thread is that somehow the USB converter board is introducing the VCD.

Right now I'm dd'ing the whole drive (500MByte) with /dev/zero. Yes, I know I'm trying to recreate what the other posters already know, but what I'd like to see is if the VCD comes back with the junk stuff on it.

By the way, the drive is an HP Simplesave 500GB portable hard drive.

~~ Mark

I'd think it is a partitioning issue. Go into disk management and see if you can create a partition. If not, try using gparted on Ubuntu to see if you can get it operational. I'm pretty sure the drive is a generic drive, so it has something to do with the proprietary controller.

On a side note, since it is a proprietary controller (unless you've followed the script here on this thread), if the controller board fails, then you lose all of your data on the hard drive. You will not be able to get a generic USB controller. I cloned my internal to Simplesave USB external with EaseUS ToDo Backup Free, then tried to examine the contents on an Ubuntu machine -- nothing is there.

I tried to use the downloads posted earlier (Apollo, etc), and the upgrades do not recognize the HP Simplesave device.

So what I'll be doing later is taking out my laptop hard drive, booting it on a SATA machine, and transferring the data SATA to SATA. Then I'll likely use the smaller hard drive as an external with the Simplesave enclosure and proprietary controller, in spite of the risks.

I'm so glad I found this thread.

Registered just to say thanks!

Here's an alternate method I used:
I was able to achieve the same results by connecting pin 7 (/HOLD) to pin 4 (GND), on the 25X20AVNIG IC, while plugging the drive into my computer; it was then recognized by the Apollo Firmware Updater... then before flashing I removed the connection to allow the firmware to be written. No soldering was required, but I had a second set of hands to hold the wire. I only considered grounding pin 7 because it happens to be connected to VCC with a fairly large pull up resistor, so there was little risk of popping something.

Thanks again.

(I apologize for digging the thread up)

hi everyone.

i just did the first part of the deal, only with a little twist.

i got from someone only the external rack, without the original hdd of a hp md1000h. i installed a 2tb hdd in it, shorted pin7+4, updated firmware.

after this, when i reconnect the drive it gets recognized as wd my book 1111, but powers off after a few seconds.

any idea what i could do?

if i try to refresh wd smartware virtual cd, i get an error, to remove the password before attempting to configure your wd smartware vcd.

Nobody managed to replace the hdd? Using any wd app i get errors that it cant access the hdd. This was happening also with the hp firmware.

Solution that worked for me:
download and run this:
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/wdsmartwa ... ite&os=WIN

durnig upgrade process you'll get an error but there is a checkbox ,select it to force and continue
if get errors retry to upgrade

disconnect all and reconnect
finish

bye bye fabio

Have you used completely clean drive ? Or with any old data on it ?

_________________
Angel Data Recovery

registered to say thank you to this very informative thread...
i thought it was a dead end for me

here's my story

i got a HP SimpleSave md1000h wife bought a year ago...
then i decided to remove the hdd then insert it to a desktop [format then use]

kept the adaptor & the enclosure for a while...
i recently bought a wd 1tb desktop hdd with no enclosure...
i decided it to put in the SimpleSave Enclosure
BUT it doesnt work...detected on PC but not showin on my computer
Manage does detect it but when i try formatting says Write Protected dang

Followed the post by gaucho and the trick used by petrox
locate the chip then short pin 4 to 7 then connect the power supply and usb then it will be detected as Initio Device
Use Apollo updater to flash the device...after that it will be detected as mybook...then...download the WD Firmware Updater...connect normally[if dont work connect it again via short pin 4 & 7 trick initio device mode ]
then Update wait for it to finish it will be asked to format the drive after that its all good and working again...

hope that helps...

best regards
swensonb

Excellent thread.

I bought an HP Simplesave md2000h, thats p/n HPBAAD0020HBK-01 and wanted to use the 3.5" 2 TB drive internally, which I have been able to do, but as you know, not without first copying its data (whole partition in my case) to another drive first. This to avoid losing any data, as the WD drive being encrypted by the Initio INIC-1607E, is seen as unallocated to Windows.

I am now trying to use a 500 GB Seagate in the enclosure. First only the LED was flashing, but by grounding pin 7 (HOLD) to pin 4 on the winbond W25X10BV and then applying power I was able to get the Initio Default Controller (under Initio Combo Device Class) to display in windows device manager.

Using "Apollo 1607E Firmware Updater v2.018-v2.019 (1.0.8.6).exe" to update the firmware, I get this message: "WD firmware update to v2.018 complete. Please power cycle your drive to complete the update process."

However, the WDFirmwareUpdater.exe does not run: "WD Firmware Updater is unable to determine the appropriate firmware for your drive. Contact technical support for assistance."

And to me it appears the rom flash has not completed because UVCView.x86.exe still shows the following:

---===>Device Information<===---

ConnectionStatus:
Current Config Value: 0x01 -> Device Bus Speed: High
Device Address: 0x04
Open Pipes: 0
*!*ERROR: No open pipes!

===>Device Descriptor<===
bLength: 0x12
bDescriptorType: 0x01
bcdUSB: 0x0200
bDeviceClass: 0xFF -> This is a Vendor Specific Device
bDeviceSubClass: 0xFF
bDeviceProtocol: 0xFF
bMaxPacketSize0: 0x40 = (64) Bytes
idVendor: 0x13FDidProduct: 0x1617
bcdDevice: 0x0100
iManufacturer: 0x00
iProduct: 0x00
iSerialNumber: 0x00
bNumConfigurations: 0x01

===>Configuration Descriptor<===
bLength: 0x09
bDescriptorType: 0x02
wTotalLength: 0x0012 -> Validated
bNumInterfaces: 0x01
bConfigurationValue: 0x01
iConfiguration: 0x00
bmAttributes: 0xC0 -> Bus Powered
MaxPower: 0x01 = 2 mA

===>Interface Descriptor<===
bLength: 0x09
bDescriptorType: 0x04
bInterfaceNumber: 0x00
bAlternateSetting: 0x00
bNumEndpoints: 0x00
bInterfaceClass: 0xFF -> Vendor Specific Device
bInterfaceSubClass: 0xFF
*!*CAUTION: This appears to be an invalid bInterfaceSubClass
bInterfaceProtocol: 0xFF
*!*WARNING: must be set to PC_PROTOCOL_UNDEFINED 0 for this class
iInterface: 0x00
*!*ERROR: 0xFF is the prerelease USB Video Class ID


Do you think the firmware was actually flashed successfully, but because it is not a WD drive, it won't work? I have already wasted a lot of time on this and will have to probably buy a generic usb enclosure if I want to use the drive, but as you know, these are approximately 1/3rd the cost of the drive itself!

Hello guis

I have a question maybe to gauch

Why you disconnect pin 6 of the Flash memory on the board just before updating??
I did the procedure without disconnecing the flash memory and it worked.
The VCD drive is disabled. It didn't pop up again neither on the pc I did the update nor on the other one.
The only problem for me is that patition on the drive remains encrypted. If i connect the HDD straight to another SATA controller the data will be invisible.
Did somebody figured out how to disable AES encryption permanently?
I need to use the controller with several HDDs and I don't need all of them encrypted.

hey guys, here's another way of removing the virtual CD from the HP SimpleSave 500Gb, if you don't mind spending a few extra bucks on a new SATA-to-USB adapter. the procedure is done straight from the hardware.
firstly, watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rig0OLZF9sw

it's in spanish but the images are pretty straight forward.
so basically you'll have to disassemble the drive and remove the SATA-USB adapter/chip that comes with it, which is where the VCD is located. then you'll be left with the actual Western Digital hard drive and its SATA port. here's where the extra bucks come in: you'll have to purchase a new SATA-to-USB adapter like the one below.

http://pt.aliexpress.com/item/High-Qual ... 33528.html

I did this with my HP SimpleSave 500Gb and then the computer immediately recognized it as a Western Digital HD. afterwards, all I had to do was to follow the standard formatting procedure through Disk Utility (I'm on a Mac) and it was ready to go.

and I was glad I could shout out SO LONG to the DAMNED HP VIRTUAL CD ! ! !

please let me know if this helps.
thank you all, this is a great forum, I registered only to post this reply.
---Leo

This isn't totally related (it won't help with the crapware), but this thread shows up for internet hunters: I was able to recover my HDD (My Passport Essential) after it entered Initio limbo. I did all of the things that other people have mentioned: uninstalling the Initio driver, disabling the Initio device, fiddling with the cable, using more USB power, trying HP disk drive utilities, WD utilities, MSFT USB utilities, etc.

I tried reaching out to WD Support, but they have no tools to help when the firmware is wonky in this post-smart update firmware age. I actually contacted Initio to see if they could help, and they were very responsive, but there wasn’t much that they could do. I opened up my drive and encountered the mystery non-SATA connection internals. I did not do any of the wiring stuff here, since the drive's Initio presence was sufficient.

It drives me nuts when I cannot get to the root of software issues. Fortunately, I worked my way through this one. To fix it, I had to use an older version of the firmware updater (gaucho mentioned it):

http://www.userdrivers.com/RAID-HD-Cont ... ter-1-032/

It seems that this older version of the firmware updater was smart enough to detect properly flashed WD drives and the “transition state” / “blank slate” ones. I really hope that this helps you. Let me know if it does, and my sympathies if it does not.

Thanks,
-Tim

when the cables coupled the app crash

Noob to the forum. I have been following along this thread (and I think I have read all 4 pages of posts) but I have not seen my scenario.

I have an HP md2000h. It has the WD20EADS hdd internal to it. I have about 650GB of data on this hdd that I would like to clone to a different hdd, as this one has a high fragmentation rate and will not get below 6% fragmentation. I initially attempted to clone it using Clonezilla Live, but it was only cloning at approx. 200 MB/min. So, it said it was going to take about 40 hours to complete.

I pulled the hdd out of the case and attached it to the motherboard via a direct SATA connection. But then the drive was not able to be found or readable. So I put it back in the case, and all of my data is still there (thankfully). My question is how can I make the hdd visible with a direct SATA connection without losing the data so that I can use a cloning tool, such as Clonezilla Live and copy the data over at a much faster rate (3 GB/min vs. 200 MB/min)?

[quote="gaucho"]@fzabkar: You are the best.(or the beast?)

1)i soldered pin number 6 of the flash, as shown in the following picture, to a wire, disconnecting the flash's pin from PCB.
2)i soldered a wire to the PCB near pin 6

[img]http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/2461/14032011321.jpg[/img]

[img]http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/7121/14032011325.jpg[/img]

[img]http://img860.imageshack.us/img860/1413/14032011326.jpg[/img]

3)i connected the hard disk with adapter to usb port of my pc.
4)i opened the utility "Apollo 1607E Firmware Updater v2.018-v2.019 (1.0.8.6).exe" (annexed to this post)
5)i selected "continue"
6)i selected "Accept" to license agreement
7) i connected both wires between them (by this way the flash becomes writable)
8) then i pressed "update firmware"
9) The utility told me "Update SUCCESSFULL!!"
10) i disconnected the usb cable and reconnected it, and now the hard disk is recognized as WD passport device.
You can see in the following picture as it is recognized.

[img]http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/7169/immagine1b.jpg[/img]

11) From WD website i downloaded the tool "WD SmartWare Virtual CD Manager for Windows Web Release-v1.0.8.3.exe" (annexed to this post)

12) i used the tool, following the onscreen instructions. At the end i disconnected and reconnected the usb device.

Now i can see a unique usb hard disk. The problem is solved.

[img]http://www.tr3ma.com/Dati/Immagine2.JPG[/img]

Thank you.
BR
Gaucho

p.s.:i think this task had 0,1% probability of success. w fzabkar. w me.

p.p.s.: now you can solder again the pin number 6 and remove the wires.

Could someone of the ADMINISTRATORS write on the title of this 3ad the keyworld [SOLVED] ?

ciao.[/quote]

hello everyone I have a problem I cannot see the photos of the cables on pin 6 can someone help me I do not understand thanks