We were going to post this in the PS3 Dev section, but since this also has to do with PS3 HDD's and we need as much help/people involved as possible we put it here instead.
Anyone who can do what
ggparallel posted above, simply press the POST REPLY button, then under "Attach Files" press the "Manage Attachments" button and browse to the zip/rar on your PC HDD to upload it here. Then Submit Reply and done!
Or, you can upload it to RapidShare/MegaUpload as mentioned above and link it here.
ALL who reply with an upload to help out will get
+1 Quality Post for doing so, and you will be assisting the resident PS3 Devs with their current progress too!
2048KB of the HDD Partition Uploads F.A.Q.:
Q: I do not want to format the drive for obvious reasons. Will it help to post the data from original 60GB HDD dedicated to PS3 system (i.e. single partition spanning the whole disk)? (
RexVF5)
A: yes it will , but please post also the size of the HDD and if there is an another otheros partition on it :-) (
ggparallel)
Q: Is quickformat enough? Should i also attach the first 2MB BEFORE formatting? (
Herogen)
A: yes in this case it is enough, and no it's fine since it should not change. (
ggparallel)
Q: i have another hd which is exactly the same. it was an old drive from my macbook. this drive is empty, would it be enough to insert that drive and do the formatting or do i really have to backup? (
Herogen)
A: well another hdd is fine as soon as it's sata and ps3 properly recognise it of course (
ggparallel)
Q: what do you expect from this? i did some similar with the backup-files some time ago... (
Herogen)
A: for now i want to make with other devs some data analisys like we did with the nand , so different datasets are welcome as first step. (
ggparallel)
Q: Would multiple dumps from the same system be useful? I know there is a great deal of variation after some thing like the first 512b, even on the same system with a full format. (
hacked2123)
A: multiple dumps with specific patterns injected on the same system will be of course helpfull , the problem is to manage a little software first that can do that in an automatically way , at this step i am already looking with other dev on ISV of data , of course will take some ages as usual , and to note we just started so it's like a first step after the great nand reversing which was a year effort. (
ggparallel)
Q: Do we know if there's any kind of ID which Sony could use to identify our PS3 stored in that first 2MB? (
Transient)
A: For them to be able to find out who you are (assuming the encrypted data even holds specific user information, which it mostlikely does not since its the top 2mb of the HDD), they would need a massive database of everyone's per box keys for the HDD, match the proper key with the dump (which could take weeks, months if not years per dump!) and all the time to go through each partial dump, and if even possible, decrypt it. I would not worry a single bit about any of the data, there is just not enough of it to identify you, and even assuming that there was (which there isn't), it would take ages to even decrypt the data, let alone pinpoint someone! So, don't worry about it! (
CJPC)
A2: Also I would guess that the data is yours (I mean you as the owner of the system) and you can do with it what you want - give it to someone or even to the whole world. I believe there is no ground for them to take any actions against you... (
RexVF5)
2048KB of the HDD Partition Uploads Quick Guide:
1) Grab a hex editor such as WinHex, Hex Workshop, etc. They are all compared and linked under "General" here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_hex_editors
2) Attach the drive to the PC, and dump the first 2048KB by (in WinHex [http://www.x-ways.net/winhex/], others are similar though) selecting "Open Disk" and then navigating to your PS3 drive on your PC under "Physical Media" or similar.
3) As pictured below, on the first bit right-click and select "Beginning of Block".
4) Next, from the top menu select "Position" and "Go To Offset" with the following settings: 200000, hexadec, and beginning of file as pictured below and press OK.
5) Now, where the cursor is blinking right-click and select "End of Block" and it will highlight the data. Right-click again, select "Edit" followed by "Copy Block" and "Into New File" and then name it
noname.dat (or whatever you wish) and press Save. The resulting file should be
2.00 MB (2,097,153 bytes) (1 byte large actually, no biggie!)
6) Finally, use WinZip (http://www.winzip.com/downwz.htm) or WinRAR (http://rarlab.com/download.htm) as
ggparallel mentioned above to compress it and then attach it following the instructions above. That's it!
PS: If you are still having trouble,
NDT posted a bit more detailed guide
HERE.
