HDD GURU FORUMS

I came to post here by reading the following news from ACE Laboratory.

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

Does it mean you don't need Decryption Board with the associated Embedded CHIP?

Wow! That is huge. Thanks for posting. I guess I had better stop dragging my feet on my updates/upgrades.

People keep bashing the Chinese tools for their poor English, but then these tools are relatively inexpensive by comparison with PC3K. Why, then, given the cost of their tools, can't Ace Lab translate their menus into proper English?

For example, they only need to consult the ATA standards documents to find out that "Use command 0x20/0x21 (with/without hardware repetition)" correctly translates as "with/without retries". And why do Russian tools insist on using the terms "road map" and "passport" when they mean "directory" and "identity" or "Identify Device"?

lcoughey wrote:I guess I had better stop dragging my feet on my updates/upgrades.

A bit of advice regarding this particular update: I'd suggest to finish all the jobs on the machine you're about to update, as it may cause slight glitches (e.g. inability to open some jobs, etc.) if done without restarting the machine.
After reboot everything works smoothly.

....run the WD Marvell utility and define encryption parameters only once. And then all encryption parameters will be saved.....

So is this only if you know the password?

Some customers are saying they never set any passwords so they can't provide one. I am not all that familiar with the topic though so I could be confusing with other forms of HDD encryption

Ace must have got around export ban of crypto software

guru wrote:Ace must have got around export ban of crypto software

It's impossible to get such FSB (ex-KGB) permit in Russia for export, especially nowadays...when sanctions come.
Even import of encrypted drives is prohibited here. For instance, all USB WD that sold in Russia have disabled encryption (not analyzed how it works, maybe U14 chip has some kind of flag/settings, don't know).

Growing up in similar circumstances, overtime I learned that anything can be allowed as long as it is controlled and held under wraps to a very restricted number of people, all for the right interest(s).

Given the nature of WD's encryption design, I have a hard time believing that some certain knowledge input about it was not provided toward this solution. There would be too much risk involved for WD to unknowingly allow Ace to develop a back door entry.

I would also like more clarification at this point of what exactly it is capable of doing without assuming a, b, c.

No back door. It just emulates bridge IC

guru wrote:No back door. It just emulates bridge IC

+10

in addition, if your drive is locked (and you dono the password) --->> forget this news update will not work

HaQue wrote:

....run the WD Marvell utility and define encryption parameters only once. And then all encryption parameters will be saved.....

So is this only if you know the password?

Some customers are saying they never set any passwords so they can't provide one. I am not all that familiar with the topic though so I could be confusing with other forms of HDD encryption

This is usually because there is damage in the sector(s) holding the encryption key. More common with earlier versions of the drives, but still possible with newer version in the right circumstances.

HaQue wrote:

....run the WD Marvell utility and define encryption parameters only once. And then all encryption parameters will be saved.....

So is this only if you know the password?

When the drive is behind the bridge, the bridge firmware reserves a number of sectors at the end of the drive for its own use, and then hides them from the host. I don't know how the newer drives enumerate themselves, but the original SmartWare models were detected as a multifunction device consisting of a Virtual CD (VCD) plus a regular USB mass storage device. The latter included an SES driver to enable vendor specific features.

AFAICT, the example at the Ace Labs URL could be for a WD15EADS which has a capacity of 2930277168 sectors. The drive has a key sector at LBA 2930272264, and this key is backed up in SA module 25 (at offset 0x200).

Code:

2930277168 - total sectors
2930272264 - location of key sector
      4904 - distance of key from end LBA
    MOD 25 - location of backup key

No good for SOC