File recovery from orphaned HDD

[spooge]

I recently fell victim to the scourge of the broken PS3, HDD ok but won't boot new PS3 because of the draconian encryption on the drives. While I'm not looking forward to 7 months of lost game progress, I am maybe going to clone the drive and store the file for later use if the dev teams come up with a way to extract the data.

I then had a thought and this has probably come up but I didn't find it.

We know the data on the drives are encrypted in a somewhat unknown filesystem. It is generally accepted that the encryption process happens at format time.

Question is: what is the system using to generate the seed encryption key? MAC address, system serial number, some other parameter? I would assume that the seed value would be stored in the flash memory on the unit which would suggest the serial number or the MAC address. Has anyone (with the ability of course) attempted to spoof these values from the orphaned system to the new one, facilitating booting from the orphaned drive and allowing data backup/recovery before unspoofing (I honestly don't know if that's a word but you get the idea).

If this works, and you knew the sn of the original machine, you could potentially recover data from HDD's that were victims of YLoD or other non booting, backup preventing PS3 deaths... (like what happened to mine).

I know efforts are in place to crack the HDD filesystem and encryption, but has anyone tried to attack the other end by making the PS3 not care about the encryption or (as above) fool it into thinking the drive is correct?

Just some thoughts. Hope this stimulates some capable neurons!

[decimalator]

Originally Posted by spooge I recently fell victim to the scourge of the broken PS3, HDD ok but won't boot new PS3 because of the draconian encryption on the drives. While I'm not looking forward to 7 months of lost game progress, I am maybe going to clone the drive and store the file for later use if the dev teams come up with a way to extract the data.

I am in the same boat. Just got a YLoD on Sunday. I did a dd of the drive from my Linux workstation, so I have that available to test with.

Btw, I'm a firmware programmer, would love to help the cause.

[broy4686]

hopefully if the rumor is true and it is able to be decrypted, you might be able to get the data off of it pretty soon.

[Pretikewl]

I've been wondering if my PS3 drive is having similar issues. When I boot up sometimes, I keep getting a 'the database must be rebuilt' message.

Nothing detrimental has happened so far, but I do get that message occasionally.

[internetfloozy]

Originally Posted by Pretikewl I've been wondering if my PS3 drive is having similar issues. When I boot up sometimes, I keep getting a 'the database must be rebuilt' message. Nothing detrimental has happened so far, but I do get that message occasionally.

I have heard of people getting this message and everything still working fine afterwards, then also read posts where the people reportedly lost everything.

To play it safe it might be a good time to back up your game saves etc.