WD My Passport Essential SE/WD10TMVV Can board be swapped?

[scootley]

Intro:
I have a Western Digital My Passport Essential SE, model number WDBABM0010BBK.
It is an external USB portable drive+enclosure, 1 TB in size, USB 2.0
Internally, the drive is model WD10TMVV, and this drive does not have have a regular SATA connector, but has a USB Micro-B (not Mini) connector right on the board, as well as some other pins.

The drive fails to be recognized as a USB device in any way whatsoever (for example, "lsusb" in Linux shows nothing).
However it receives power from USB just fine, spins up, and sounds ok to the ear.
I believe there is a problem with the controller board. I have tried using a different computer, operating system, and USB cable.

I do not believe there is any problem with the mechanics or internals of the drive, but only the outer logic board, which contains the encryption chip and USB interface.

My question:
Elsewhere on this forum and elsewhere on the web, I've seen posts that imply that the data on this drive is encrypted even if the user has never entered an encryption password, using some sort of default or factory-set password that is transparent to the user. I have never entered any password.

Since I can't find any good information about connecting the drive's non-standard connector to SATA (eliminating the enclosure), it seems like the safest approach is to replace the logic board with one from an identical working drive. However, will this work? Or does each individual drive have a unique encryption key/password stored on its logic board, preventing swapping of logic boards, even on drives where the user has never chosen a password?

Thanks

[einstein9]

each PCB has it own info. for example the ROM/Modules and so
swapping PCB will not work here

if you find any matching pcb, u will need to replace the ROM to the new PCB in this case and plug-n-pray
that nothing else is damaged specially SA

[BlackST]

His problem is encryption...

[einstein9]

Well, i managed to fix few of those types here BlackST, but ur right here, after fixing the damn PCB i found as you said here some sort of encryption which till now i did not figure out HOW to get my clients files from it

i`ve tried most of the well known App. to see and look for files but nothing so far
HDD is working again but no success of data retrieval till now

and am still doing my research on it

thnx for reminding here i guess there are few things i did not try yet which i will do now

[scootley]

Thanks. Ok. Although you didn't exactly say it, it seems that each individual drive have a unique encryption key/password stored on its logic board, preventing swapping of logic boards, even on drives where the user has never chosen a password, from your comments.

Do you know of any data recovery company that can successfully recover this specific drive, assuming the issue is with something on the logic board?

Are all of the data recovery companies recommended by WD able to fix it, you think?

[scootley]

Is there a way to bypass the USB interface and connect a SATA cable, but NOT bypass the encryption, so as to continue to use the onboard decryption and just not the USB?

[drguy]

The USB controller is what encrypts/decrypts the data

[BlackST]

So, guess the state of data on the platters ....

[scootley]

I am guessing it is encrypted, but hopefully unharmed.
But does the USB controller do the encryption/decryption on the SATA data stream, or on a USB data stream?

In other words, is it:
Platters | USB controller: encrypt/decrypt SATA stream | USB controller: SATA2USB/USB2SATA | USB connector
or
Platters | USB controller: SATA2USB/USB2SATA | USB controller: encrypt/decrypt USB stream | USB connector

[drguy]

It's done inside the controller, what difference does it make at which stage?
It's encrypted on the SATA side, decrypted on the USB side.

[BlackST]

If it was so simple....

P.S. thread closed for me, I can't give any further detail.

[scootley]

It's done inside the controller, what difference does it make at which stage?

It's the difference between being able to access it via SATA in an unencrypted form by just connecting some wires vs having to rip apart the board and replace components and/or flash ROMs to get the USB<->SATA conversion working again in order to then decrypt the data onboard.

Maybe you are saying that encryption/decryption and USB<->SATA is done inside of a single Integrated Circuit (IC, chip). In that case my point is irrelevant. But there are several IC's on the board

[fzabkar]

... after fixing the damn PCB i found ... some sort of encryption which till now i did not figure out HOW to get my clients files from it.

If the encryption is done by the INIC-1670E chip, and if you have fixed the board, and assuming the client has given you his password, then why wouldn't you have access to the decrypted data?

[fzabkar]

But does the USB controller do the encryption/decryption on the SATA data stream, or on a USB data stream?

See this article:

256-Bit Based Hardware Encryption on WD MyBook Essential:
http://computersciencelabs.blogspot.com ... on-wd.html

BTW, the encryption algorithm appears to handle data as groups of 16 bytes. AFAICS, this would make it 128-bit based hardware encryption, not 256-bit.

AFAICT, the HD PCB has two EEPROMs -- one for the HD, and a second for the Initio bridge chip. If the encryption key is stored in the EEPROM, then you should be able to move both chips to a donor board. Otherwise, if the key is uniquely flashed or OTPROM-ed into the bridge, then that will be a serious obstacle, especially if the bridge is dead.

The first thing I would do is to verify that there is continuity at all four pins of the mini-USB connector, particularly Data+ and Data-. To this end I would attach a USB cable and perform a continuity test for each pin from the host end to the PCB end.

Here are the USB pinouts:
http://pinouts.ru/Slots/USB_pinout.shtml

I would then disconnect either the clock or data pin from the serial EEPROM attached to the Initio bridge. The bridge, if it has sanity, should then identify itself with the Product ID and Vendor ID of its manufacturer, Initio Corp, rather than the IDs of the device manufacturer, WDC.