WD USB Bridge Board to SATA Question

[ddrecovery]

I have a WD Studio with Oxford encryption which is not decrypted by PC3000. Just a thought, would it be possible to convert the USB bridge board to SATA to read the drive? Or would this make no difference to how the drive reads?

[pcimage]

What's happened to the original Oxford board?

[ddrecovery]

What's happened to the original Oxford board?

Nothing its fine. The drive has had a head swap but failed when imaging on the DDI. So I wanted to image the data area only, preferably using SATA tools rather than through the USB. If I image the entire 2TB on the DDI I don't think it will survive. Just trying to be as efficient as I can at getting the data.

[fzabkar]

There is a fellow who has managed to work out the decryption algorithm for Initio and JMicron based Passport drives, and he provides open source software to do it:

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php? ... 7906#p7870
https://github.com/andlabs/reallymine

He is looking for people to supply him with dumps from the beginning and end of their encrypted drives. Currently he is working on Symwave, but he is still looking for Oxford dumps. Perhaps you could oblige him?

[ddrecovery]

He is looking for people to supply him with dumps from the beginning and end of their encrypted drives. Currently he is working on Symwave, but he is still looking for Oxford dumps. Perhaps you could oblige him?

Sure will. Need to get the data first

[ddrecovery]

Fzabkar: With you vast experience of electronics, do you know if what I am asking is possible?

[northwind]

Converting (soldering) SATA to USB bridge will not make the encryption go away, as far as I know.

[labtech]

Can't image data area only over USB with the USB add-on on DDI?

[ddrecovery]

Converting (soldering) SATA to USB bridge will not make the encryption go away, as far as I know.

If we are accessing data through the bridge board, the Oxford chip will decrypt the data (unless I am missing something obvious...)

[ddrecovery]

Can't image data area only over USB with the USB add-on on DDI?

I don't have the USB add-on. With PC-3000 encryption software and PC-3000 flash we didn't see a need for it (until now of course )

[pcimage]

Pc3k should be able to decrypt Oxford encrypted drives.

http://www.acelaboratory.com/news/newsi ... itemid=115

[ddrecovery]

Pc3k should be able to decrypt Oxford encrypted drives.
http://www.acelaboratory.com/news/newsi ... itemid=115

Apparently this only covers some of the Oxford encrypted drives. From what I understand some Oxford encryption is unique to the board, some is generic. My drive appears to be unique.

[fzabkar]

do you know if what I am asking is possible?

AFAICS, what you are asking makes no sense. To "convert" the USB interface to SATA, you simply disconnect the drive from the bridge board and plug it into a SATA controller on your motherboard.

[ddrecovery]

do you know if what I am asking is possible?

AFAICS, what you are asking makes no sense. To "convert" the USB interface to SATA, you simply disconnect the drive from the bridge board and plug it into a SATA controller on your motherboard.

This is a very fragile drive and the encryption chip is on the bridge board. I wanted to see folder structure and grab what I can as fast as I can. So ideally imaging with SATA through the bridge board would be the preference. The drive will not survive a full image of unencrypted data. Hope that makes sense.

[jono-ats]

Connect the drive to the USB bridge interface, and use WD's Smartware to determine if there is also a user-defined password.

[fzabkar]

AIUI, this is what you have:

Code:

                           bridge PCB
         .-----------------------------------------.
         |                                         |
  USB <--|--> USB         .-----------.            |
  host   |    device -----| encryption|    SATA    |   SATA
         |                |  engine   |--- host <--|-> HDD
  FW  <--|--> Firewire ---|           |            |
  host   |    device      '-----------'            |
         |                                         |
         '-----------------------------------------'

... and this is what you want:

Code:

                            bridge PCB
          .-----------------------------------------.
          |                                         |
   USB <--|--> USB         .-----------.            |
   host   |    device -----| encryption|    SATA    |   SATA
          |                |  engine   |--- host <--|-> HDD
   FW  <--|--> Firewire ---|           |            |
   host   |    device      |           |            |
          |                |           |            |
  SATA <--|--> SATA -------|           |            |
  host    |    device      '-----------'            |
          '-----------------------------------------'

Does the bridge IC even have an extra SATA port? I doubt it. Even if it does, then the port will most probably be configured as a SATA host, as in the case of a RAID.

Code:

                           bridge PCB
         .-----------------------------------------.
         |                                         |
  USB <--|--> USB         .-----------.            |
  host   |    device -----| encryption|    SATA    |   SATA
         |                |  engine   |--- host <--|-> HDD
  FW  <--|--> Firewire ---|           |            |
  host   |    device      |           |--- SATA <--|-> SATA
         |                '-----------'    host    |   HDD
         |                                         |
         '-----------------------------------------'

[ddrecovery]

I guess this is probably not possible to do. Now I have a little more time this is why I am asking. This drives came to me after going to another DR company. They didn't have a cleanroom so the drive came to me after going back to the client. This was a few weeks ago now.

The drive has one failed head and as stated this particular encryption is not one of those supported by PC-3000. Believe me I tried. Unfortunately neither the client or the other data recovery company (who were very helpful) could initially find the bridge board. So we had no choice but to try to complete a full image the drive on a DDI and cope with decryption after. We tried three sets of heads and got a big chunk of the drive imaged, but as these are videos many are still corrupt, especially the particular videos they want. Recently the bridge board appeared and was found and mailed to us. So we have a drive imaged on the DDI for the most part, but with encrypted data. Or we can now attempt to recover the drive through the USB bridge board from scratch. However its USB 2.0 so likely to be very slow and not sure if the drive will survive. Hopefully you now see the reason for asking the question.

Thanks for the help and advice.

[data-medics]

I think what I would do is image the encrypted data over SATA to another drive that you can use along with the bridge after the fact to decrypt. You won't be able to target specific data, but you can at least image by head that way, then work with decrypting the data from a healthy HDA.

[ddrecovery]

I think what I would do is image the encrypted data over SATA to another drive that you can use along with the bridge after the fact to decrypt. You won't be able to target specific data, but you can at least image by head that way, then work with decrypting the data from a healthy HDA.

This is what we did with the first three head swaps, but still couldn't get enough of the data read.

[drHDD]

1. Connect bridge board to image drive
2. create task in pc3000 for image drive with connected bridge board.
3. locate data which you want to save
4. save map of lba regions of important data from step 3
5. create task in pc3000 for client drive connected to sata (encrypted)
6. open map of lba regions from step 4
7. image lba regions to image drive without bridge board.
8. open first task from step 2 and copy data to target drive