Everything has two sides. Murder knife can also save lives。 Moreover, this is just a tool.

We are talking about fake knifes then :@)

quote="flykiller"]
Everything has two sides. Murder knife can also save lives。 Moreover, this is just a tool. [/quote]

_________________
All went well until I plugged the drive in.

While I obviously deplore fraud (having been a victim of it), I see enough genuine reasons for a user to want to change the serial number.

One is Microsoft's evil practice of preventing Xbox users from installing the hard drives of their choice. In fact I suspect that one could use HddHackr to do the same thing for WD ROYL drives, not just in Xbox applications. IIUC, one would only need to edit the appropriate text strings in any HDDSS.BIN file.

http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/Hd ... lysis.html

Another reason would be to enable a user to replace or upgrade a HDD whose serial number is tied to a particular software licence.

Still another reason might be to enable a user to replace or upgrade a HDD which is part of a DVD recorder, eg a Panasonic. DVD-R manufacturers often charge inflated prices for models with a larger HDD, completely out of proportion to the relative costs of the HDDs. That's a reprehensible practice IMO.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

中国的同行，支持下，方便的话，加下你的QQ

Smart302, 我不记得自已QQ号，如果有需要，可PM，或直接发邮件: canny_feng@hotmail.com

Own research = From owning an Xbox 360 and trying to get Seagate drives to work? I'm impressed that it works on Seagates in addition to WD's!

I'm serious though about being curious to how you developed it. I'm into that kind of thing. Thanks for sharing!


Yeah, using something like this to mark a drive falsely would not be cool unless it's to fix a 'compatibility' issue with 4th-party-vendor junk like Microsoft's demand that people use obsoletely-small drives.

Disassembly and trace some code! For those purely interested in。 When you have ideas about something, everything will be easier to。

WD's Vendor Specific Commands (VSC) are tunnelled through to the drive disguised as SMART log data using standard ATA commands (SMART Read/Write Log).

The following URL should provide some insight:
http://idle3-tools.sourceforge.net/

When modifying WD's ROYL MODs, you need to recompute a little endian 32-bit checksum over the module's contents. This sum must be zero. The checksum bytes are at offsets 0x0C - 0x0F.

The following resource contains several examples of MHDD scripts:
http://yura.projektas.lt/files/wd/mhdd/index.html

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

I wish I could get at the code to trace on those Fujitsu drives. Unknown byte code format, unable to find firmware dump, on and on it seems I'd need some hardware tools/insider knowledge. I did find that the MHx drives had similar bytecode, though, before just taking the drive back. The most common bytes were still the most common. But chicken and egg, still. Also, now I have a Seagate drive in exchange, heh.

Yeah, I read that site and loved all the lovely details. Translating was a pain, though! Not that low-level program code needs much translating.

I saw a program that did something interesting that I wish I had noticed before... DOS mode program that let you see supposedly 'SMART logs' that are in fact those vendor-specific objects like the ones that you mention. I didn't read your post about that fact until after reading about WD's 'VSC On' 0x80 command and that site. Oh well... At least it's there for the next person!

Or the only way to recover a Raid0?

One of the 2 drives in my Raid0 was dieing. Marked as failed by the controller and IRST. Cloned the failing drive in another computer, but the controller and IRST rejected the clone as part of the raid sololy because the serial numbers were different.

This utility just enabled me to recover my Raid0 with 95%+ of the data intact! Someone should link it on the software page!

What happens with fakes

http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop/A-f ... /m-p/56320

_________________
All went well until I plugged the drive in.

BTW, in that thread I stated, incorrectly, that the drive was spinning at 5900 RPM. That's the speed of Seagate's green drives. WD's spin at 5400 RPM.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

flykiller,

Is there any way to make this work with pre-ROYL WD drives?

You need to read the MOD(s) that contain the serial number, edit the S/N using a hex editor, recompute the checksum for the MOD, and then write it back.

You can read all the MODs using NazYura's utilities:
http://nazyura.hardw.net/000006.htm

The following checksum calculator was written by Pete Disdale:
download/file.php?id=4921

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks! I read module 42, edited the number, changed the checksum...still working on the "write it back" step.

Does your drive have a WD MCU?

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

I guess the calculator is intelligent?

_________________
All went well until I plugged the drive in.

I have written my own routine to recompute the checksums of ROYL modules. It wouldn't be difficult to adapt it for the OP's purpose.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

I worry that people will try the link that you gave and expect it to work.......

_________________
All went well until I plugged the drive in.

where is your checksum calculator, did you upload it?

_________________
All went well until I plugged the drive in.