[namtheman]

Buffalo MiniStation HD-PNTU3 - Broken

• 
  The metal piece, from circuit board, that connects to the usb cable has broken off leaving exposed delicate pins but some have broken away

• 
  The external hard disk is password protected but i know the password

• 
  I bought an exact same HDD and took the hardware IC board piece from the new one and replaced the broken one. It did not do the trick

• 
  I am sure that the original piece of IC board has some encryption and only that piece can give access to my data that is locked

Am I wrong?
Would anyone know a way around this?
I have tried to connect by other ways to the hard disk but it is marked unknown or it does not show up on computer

There must be a software out there that can bypass it (with my password)

I also have a data retrieval software....it don't work neither

anyone who can help, would much appreciate the time and effort!


Nam the Man
Professional Football Freestyler

 

[ricovox]

I had exactly the same problem with the USB detachment and breakage of the pins. :banghead: As far as I know, I did NOT have encryption enabled on my drive. However, when I took out the HD and tried to read it with a SATA-to-USB adapter, the drive appeared to have no valid partition on it. (I later attached the drive directly to my PC to verify that the adapter was working correctly--same result.)
I assumed there must have been some disk corruption when the USB attachment broke. So I scanned the drive with several disk recovery tools, including testdisk and Recuva. Neither tool found any partitions (or files etc) on the disk, even after using a deep cylinder-by-cylinder search.
The only explanation I could come up with is that the HD-PNTU3's IC board has some default encryption or that it modifies the data somehow, causing the data on the HD to be scrambled in some way. Of course, when encryption is not enabled, the IC would unscramble the data upon accessing it. But when accessing the drive directly, without the IC board, the unscrambling of course does not occur.
That is just my hunch, and I thought I would try to do what you did and buy another HD-PNTU3 and use it to interface with my drive. I assumed that the IC boards themselves would be identical, and so replacing my board with a duplicate would work fine.
I haven't actually tried that yet, because when I ordered a duplicate, the store was out of stock. I figured the device was discontinued, and I've been waiting to find it on craigslist, but no luck yet.
But now, after reading your post, I'm concerned that a replacement IC board will not work. If each one has a unique key (or IV or SALT perhaps) then whatever default encryption/scrambling was done by the original IC might not be able to be unscrambled by the new one.
I don't know why the IC board would scramble the data even when no encryption was applied, but I figured that Buffalo found that by converting the data to some other format, it could more easily or quickly be encrypted when encryption is enabled. But even in the absence of encryption, the IC still uses the same data conversion for some reason. Of course this is all pure speculation, but I can't think of any other reason that my drive would be completely garbage. Even if some parts of it were corrupted, testdisk would have found some remnants of a partition I think.

Anyway, were you able to ever retrieve you data from the disk? If so how?
Thanks!!

 

[namtheman]

Hi there!

thanks so much for your reply and the hunch on the device issue......I really need the data on my disk as it contains a lot of family photos.

If i ever find a way to unlock it, i will let you now asap! Likewise if you can, that would be sweet too!!

So annoying!

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

You could try removing the hdd from it's enclosure and attaching to another working computer with a SATA-TO-USB adapter for under $20 US as here: Vantec SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter CB-ISATAU2 - Newegg.com

Then try using GetDataBack to read files/folders from the Buffalo hdd and copy to another external usb hard drive of at least 50% greater capacity than the Buffalo hdd. GetDataBack will give you a list of files it can recover; but to actually recover and copy them will cost you $60.

If this fails, consider sending it out to very expensive professional forensic data recovery.If this data you're trying to retrieve is IRREPLACEABLE such as heirloom family photos, music/video library, or Tax Records, you'll have to decide how much $$ you are willing to spend to get them back. :huh: They have tools that may be able to bypass the buffalo encryption, as they read the disk platters at a low-level digital source.:wink:

There are 2 companies I can recommend if you are interested post back here for their contact info.

Best of luck,:thumb:
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>

 

[namtheman]

Big Bear Jedi

cheers for the info, i will try this method and feedback to group. The encryption is my concern.

Shall have a try

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Sure thing! You're welcome.

Let us know the outcome so we can share with other members.

Have a Great Week!:grin:
<<<BBJ>>>

 

[spybld]

Any solutions to this?

I also have broken the usb-b connector and mounting via SATA does not show the volume as I'm guessing there is some default encryption

Please help, I just want my data!

 

[spunk.funk]

The drives are not Encrypted but they are in a RAID. Instead of using GetDataBack try another of their products NAS Data Recovery NAS Data Recovery - RAID arrays - Buffalo Iomega DLink Seagate Western Digital - Data Recovery Software Products