Hello,

Update...

After scanning for 5 hours, partedmagic(linux) can see the apple folders on the disk (e.g ipod control folders) but cannot change anything.

Tried DBAN(nuke) = "finished with non-fatal errors"

Toshiba has this thing LOCKED UP

I'm stuck with TWO of these drives, useless to me, as I don't have or want an Ipod.

Any other suggestions?

Who can hack this drive???

PS Happy New Year !!!

Forget answers from the manufacturers. There is not a free solution. These drives are not documented and even 10.000+ $ tools have little or no features. Some of us had to work out the solutions. Sell the drives on ebay as ipod spare parts. Or pay. Period.

pay what? what program will do this?

I'll even pay You, if you have the way.

BlackST, now you have me thinking that there IS an answer.

If anything, please give me a hint. I'm not in this to make money. I could care less. It's just that I have spent soooo much time on this now, and I have two of these drives, and still no working laptop.

Please give me a hint. I'm leaning toward linux, am I going in the right direction?
I don't have an ipod, can this be done 'without' the help of an ipod?

I'm not ready to give up and sell the drives yet.

BlackST, are you able to PM me?

Hint : If you have still time to spend (about 6 months), you are VERY DEEP into MCUs, you can develop "something" to work on these drives.
You have to develop a custom solution in a few words. And what's worst, I said and confirm that for some models/brands, even the most expensive tools can do little or nothing. That's when research and development swing into action. And Toshiba drives are one of these.

Hint #2 : a 250GB drive is less than 50$ / EUR according to internet prices. If you cannot afford such scandalous price... well, I don't have anything more to say.
Unlike you, I'm in this field to make money, because I do it for a living so PLEASE don't ask for free help. There's a limit to everything.

Well,

I'm taking this to mean: Give Up.

I'm selling the drives today.

Thank you for your advice.

Good Day,
..and Goodbye.

Last update before selling the drives : ask a PRO DR if he/they can do something for a reasonable price (that could be likely 10/15 $ / EUR) - I am doubtful it is possible but someone may have "THE" solution.
But beware of "trial and error" - this person has to know exactly what to do and have the proper gear. Or the risk is to damage drive beyond repair.

If any of you two wish to sell these Toshiba drives, I'll buy them...PM me.

_________________
http://pcrecoveryllc.com

Hi

I will buy them too. Send me a PM.

There is no point contacting Toshiba. Toshiba does not lock them. Apple locked them. It is a hidden password/HPA. You can buy the software from Apple UK for about £5K.

Ace labs are working on these drives and should be able to unlock them this year. I hope

Im going to wait to see if Ace labs can unlock these drives, but if any one has a solution here or can create a program to unlock these drives. I am willing to pay you to create a program for me.

Hey, just read your post and at least i have a lot of experience in using linux (12yrs Desktop Linux User, Server, SysAdmin Exp), let me point you to some stuff i have managed to document over the years that hopefully might be of some help. In all honestly its all geared towards "getting data back" but still might find it useful none the less.
I have scraped some of this from various websites and added stuff in over time as i use the various utilities. Testdisk which you mention is one of them along with another photorec but there usage is again more about recovery than formatting. If and when i want to format something i just use dd so if your booting up on a linux system when you plug in the drive run dmesg and it should show you what it see's happening, know that it closes out after if displays so if its taking a while for the drive to be recognized might want to run it 5 or 6 times till the drive settles down and the system see's it.
assuing its showing up and the drive shows up as /dev/sdb then you would run this.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb

That would basically use the device /dev/zero which is capable of generations endless streams of zero's as the input file and the output file of that is going to be pumped into /dev/sdb that would zero out your drive, but if they are writing custom firmware for that drive its going to be in the service area of the drives and that command will not touch those tracks, that would require other tools to modify that area.

The stuff i documented i have written up in a wiki and periodically as needed i add stuff in, the best document i have at this time can be found here.

http://67.101.118.242/wiki/index.php/Data_Recovery

Hope that is helpful. Linux is your best bet btw, it acknowledges other OS's exist and plays nicely with everything, cant say the same about any of the others though.
Tnt

Im going to use partedmagic on the drives i have here (Toshiba MK8022GAA) to see if it can see the apples files. Maybe if i find which sectors the apple folders are on. I could remove them using the old PC3K sector by sector erase?

@AWAaron, until the drive is locked, or better, frozen, you won't see anything and you won't be able to access a single LBA block. No ATA command will work.

I can scan the drive with a software called victorica. It scans ok (no bad sectors). I had a look at the smart info and it says 4928 reallocated sectors? that cant be right? I think apple have changed the firmware on these drives which is stopping to me to reomve the HPA DCO areas. I dont know what to do. I give up on this. Im going to wait to see if acelabs can unlock these. Have 100 drives sitting here doing nothing.

It would be an update for Pc3000 udma. The entire complex is going to cost you about 10'000 $. Even for fixing 100 drives, for me it's suicide.

Do you know if i need to buy the data extractor to unlock these drive.

Just to let everyone know. PC3000 UDMA can unlock the Toshiba MK8010GAH. You dont need the entire complex (Data Extractor). Will be able to unlock Toshiba MK8022GAA soon i think.

Apple put a HPA/DCO on these drives and then a special firmware. You can't remove the HPA/DCO with any free software.

hi, i'm trying to recover file from ipod 5th gen hard drive. i have the zif connected usb.
i have the red light which is suppose to mean accessing hdd but my pc has not reconized it or i don't know how to access it. i'm using vista no drivers need the instruction says. can anyone help. i'm not trying to potion. I want to retrive the file off the ipods hard drive because ipod is nolong working. please can anyone help

What is the Make and Model of the hard drive you are trying to access?
Can you see the drive in Disk Management?

Nice, I've got a MK8010GAH, it can be useless know how to unlock!