This is usually an odd request. I have a failing Hard drive. It has bad sectors but i am still able to backup the partitions/data. The problem is the Controller holds special non retail information like modified model/Serial #. I have yet to dump the rom chip with my Willem to preserve it. My question is i am concerned that buying the same make/model hard drive just for the HDA is safe and wont damage the controller. I also do not know if the information on the rom chip is encrypted or not so until i get another drive i cant safely test doing a rom chip swap/clone.

I do have another HDA with the same storage space and would match up to the original controller i am trying to preserve, but again i am concerned if there is any possibility that the HDA could damage the controller?

If any experts could shed some light i would very much appreciate it. Thank you.

You can use the demo version of SeDiv to read the "ROM" and SA modules.

http://sediv2008.narod.ru/Easy3.9Passwo ... 567890.rar
http://sediv2008.narod.ru/Settings.rar

SeDiv WD Read ROM & Modules:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UgFfhkkAwY

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Oops, I wrongly assumed the OP had a WD.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

1: MK3276GSX/Toshiba
2: Yes the drive needs to report a specific serial#
3: The company that made the machine/software announced closure but did not release an update to remove the serial# check.
Basicly a big F you to its loyal customers that payed over $3k for there machines.

If you use CrystalDiskInfo's Text Copy function to obtain your drive's Identify Device information (512 bytes), I could help you to reprogram a WD drive using HDDHackr.

I recommend that you clone the drive with ddrescue immediately afterwards.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Find a reverse engineer. Im willing to have a look.
look for win api calls to functions such as GetVolumeInformation. nop, change jne's or whatever. patch. done. Install any HDD.

I found the function its called "GetHardDriveSerialNumber" but i didnt want to do too much messing around until i have a good working backup to test with.

That gets the serial number. yes. But your software then must do other stuff with the information it gleans from it, such as compare the serial with something, and do operations based on true/false of the compare.

it may be as simple as hex editing the serial from your drive into the binary, or not. Binary may have a checksum or anti-debugging functions. It may obfuscate the serial, encrypt or encode it.. this is rare though.

One of the simples ones I ever did was to a MS Game, IIRC it was command and conquer.. you were supposed to have the CD in the drive to play. Well we got problems back in the day with no money and a broken CD drive, so where it checked to see if a CD was there, getDriveTypeA, it returned a number such as 1 or 2 or 3 etc. there was a simple compare to the number corresponding to the CD..
type returned in eax and cmp eax,5 followed by a jump. just patch exe to cmp eax, 3 and then it would play if the PC had the game running on a HDD.

If you found the function then it is a windows box, so IMHO patching software easier than messing with a HDD.

I appreciate all the ideas you fine people have mentioned and trust me, i have already poked around with those ideas.

But getting back to part of my initial Q was is it safe for the controller board if i clone the HDA and swap the original controller onto the cloned HDA? I just want to rule out if there any issues with the cloned HDA without going further in dumping the rom/firmware chips. And the last thing i want to do is kill the controller board.

update: I now have an exact model with the same G002825A controller board. But again, i just want to verify that the original controller is safe from damage caused by a slightly different rev# HDA (SL01 S vs SL01 T)

So worst case senerio it just wont work but it wont damage anything if i try a swap? I mean its worth a try right?

I gave it a try. You were correct, it did not work. Just made a quiet ticking sound.

Does the model/series matter? I need atleast 320gb so if i can use any WD drive i will head to a local computer parts store and buy one.

Any WD drives, or specific model/series?

Any Scorpio drive with a capacity greater than or equal to your existing drive should work. HDDHackr will modify it to match your MK3276GSX drive's model number, serial number, firmware version and capacity. You just need to edit an appropriate HDDSS.BIN file. I can do all that for you.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Its been awhile since ive used HDDHackr. I might still have a scorpio from my xbox360 modding days. Pretty sure the scorpio in my xbox360 is less then 320gb though.

Ok i just checked the scorpio inside my xbox360 and its a WD3200BEVT. Only problem is i think at the time the HDDSS.bin was from a 250gb scorpio. So i am not sure if i can recover the original 320gb.

I've just helped the OP in the following thread clone a Hitachi drive to a WD using HDDHackr:

viewtopic.php?t=31045

The clone was successful. He now has a 500GB WD drive that identifies itself with the same model, firmware, serial number and capacity as the original 250GB Hitachi drive.

Your WD3200BEVT drive and 250GB HDDSS.bin file should suffice for our purposes.

If you choose to go ahead, I would need to see the Identify Device information for your source and destination drives. You could use CrystalDiskInfo:

http://crystalmark.info/software/Crysta ... dex-e.html

First go to Edit -> Copy Option and select Identify Device. Then go to Edit -> Copy. This will copy the disk information to the clipboard. Then open up NotePad or whichever word processor ships with your version of Windows, and choose Edit -> Paste (or Ctrl-V) to input the clipboard data.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Here is the HDD info obtained from CrystalDiskInfo.

http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=LQnGtRcX

For some reason some of my posts need moderation but i made a post with the hdd info.
WD drive http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=M18ZwJHw
Toshiba drive http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=LQnGtRcX

You can use the following HDDSS.bin with HDDHackr:

http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/temp/HDDSS_edited.zip

I've extracted the following information from your CrystalDiskInfo Identify Device dump and patched it into a standard HDDSS.bin file (any file will do as a template).

Model : TOSHIBA MK3276GSX
54 4F 53 48 49 42 41 20 4D 4B 33 32 37 36 47 53 58 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20

Firmware : GS001A
47 53 30 30 31 41 20 20

Serial Number : X1A8S10HS
20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 58 31 41 38 53 31 30 48 53

capacity in LBAs (word 100)
25 42 EA B0 -> B0 EA 42 25 (reverse order)

You can use a hex editor such as HxD (freeware) for the editing.

Hopefully you can now keep your expensive device out of the landfill. :-)

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

I should add that HDDHackr overwrites sectors 16-22 with the HDDSS.bin contents, so you would need to apply the hack before cloning your drive.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.