My Weekend Project - Locked HDD's
This Thread stsrted in the Addicts And it was recommended that we move it on up here:
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Hi Guy's
A phoene call from a friend (of virus fame), has lead me on a bit of a quest:
He purchased a number of 10Gb Seagate HDDs on ebay, these were supposedly out of working XBox's.
When he connec ted them up in a test system, recognised in BIOS, but no data..ok no problem
Fdisk, partition magic. ranish?..nope.. only a subtle message on one of the tools "Locked Drive"
Now untill he said that, I was thinking he had blown his house keeping on a set of door stops..
now after reading a few of his links we have learnt a little on the problem.. as well created a few questions for regular repair decisions.
1/ The xbox Locks the HDD in (the HDD's) BIOS, apparently many HDDS are lockable. (the locked HDD and the xbox bios go to gether.. you can't just stick the hdd in another xbox and play the two passwords will be different).
2/ Malware can also Lock the HDD
3/ So can random System problems, hardware, psu etc
4/ There are tolls available to lock and unlock the HDD's.. well unlock IF you have the locking password
5/ No bastard on any of the sites I have visited know anymore than I have posted here, save some furfy passwords..
6/Some manufactures have a "Universal" Password..(or is this a urban ledgend)
so my questions:
1/ Anyone had anything to do with locking HDD's or encountered a locke hdd (I suspect now I have seen many..unknownly)
2/It must be possable to read the HDD's BIOS, and if not get directly to the encrypted password, at least be able to reflash the BIOS
3/ Just how many dead HDD's are out there that are only locked..
I have to go.. I will post some Links for your reading when I return
A reply from groovicus
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It sounds like an interesting project. I have a thought and a question (for when you get back) ..actually, I really don't want to know the answer to my question, so I'll just skip it
From what I understand, even if you are able to get it unlocked, the format will still be as such that your test box still won't be able to read it....
It still sounds like a fun way to spend a weekend.
instronics offered some help and recommended that everyone else will benifit from this thread:
My Follow up Post: (while insotronics was posting his):
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Back:
The first info was to work out what the hell was going on so where else but google and what looked like the best sort of site to get some good goss.. A XBox hacker site.. this page at xbox-linux project was my first stop. Followed by a bit of filler from xbox-scene.. so far I am at risk of becoming a XBox Hacker most of the other links were xbox related This one was handy for tools: Rockbox
So As I said in my first post the "Lock" appears to be in the HDD's "BIOS".. i am calling it the BIOS untill I am corrected.. So it isn't a File system specific thing.. we have tried various tools (we are lost to find a low level formating tool..and i suspect we will be f...d there as well) and all have failed.. we have tried some suposed "Manufacturer" passwords, and no results.. and my pity is I had only three weeks ago thrownout some 20 or so hdd's of which a few would have been good candidates for a unlocking experiment - ie the symptoms ar that of what we see here...
I am currently looking into a more techno side of the problem.. ie: using "tool" to read the BIOS.. this is to enable comparison with other known good hdds and locked hdds.. with a view of - flashing the bios and returninng the drive to normal operation..
This is important to me as it likly could involve a virus infection or a hardware failure that locks a customers or worse a work PC.. I want to be prepared for such an occasion..
I will attach most of the usable links to thios post for any that are interested.. whail 99% is XBox related.. the basics of Drive locking can be gleaned from these links..
On with my Quest
Ok There you have it.. so far..
Cheers