Set-top box HDD rehab.

[shakalnokturn]

I have a couple of Western Digital 500GB WD5000LUCT disks pulled from set top boxes, unfortunately these run a specific firmware that prevents use elsewhere.

I don't care for the data that may be on the disks but would like to be able to use them in laptops or for backups, I've identified the WD5000LPLX and WD5000LPCX as being at least very physically similar.

Would it be as simple as getting the right "standard" firmware onto the SPI Flash or is it likely to have more twists in it than that?
Any chances of screwing the magnetic side of the disk control for good by trying the wrong FW?

[tautech]

Goto WD and get one of their drive tools:
https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?lang=en

[Wuerstchenhund]

I have a couple of Western Digital 500GB WD5000LUCT disks pulled from set top boxes, unfortunately these run a specific firmware that prevents use elsewhere.

I don't care for the data that may be on the disks but would like to be able to use them in laptops or for backups, I've identified the WD5000LPLX and WD5000LPCX as being at least very physically similar.

Would it be as simple as getting the right "standard" firmware onto the SPI Flash or is it likely to have more twists in it than that?
Any chances of screwing the magnetic side of the disk control for good by trying the wrong FW?

This is unlikely to work.

For once, just because they appear similar from the outside doesn't mean the drives use the same internals (the housing/chassis is often common across models). The WD5000LUCT is an AV Series drive with 5400rpm specifically aimed at DVR use, and quite often the hardware is very specific (very low power, very low noise, focus on stable sustained data rates instead of raw performance, and sometimes even with lack of support of certain SATA features). The WD5000LPCX is a 5400rpm desktop drive of the WD Blue Series and the WD5000LPLX is WD Black Series desktop drive with 7200rpm, both which are unlikely to use the same chipsets as the AV Series.

The other thing is that on may modern drives not always is the firmware in a ROM, but often parts or even all of it might be located on the magnetic media (the ROM then only contains software to initiate the firmware download from the platters).

Lastly, your issue might not be the firmware (the AV Series can, after all, be used as regular SATA drives), it's more likely that the drives have been firmware locked, which is a common thing on many DVR platforms to prevent people from directly accessing recordings,. thereby circumventing the settop box DRM.

If you're really sure it's a firmware issue then I would suggest looking for the AV Series firmware for that drive.

[Syntax Error]

Although optimised for AV work, the specs of the WD500LUCT suggest it should work for any PC/MAC. A 'green' 5400rpm, so not the fastest, but with 16Mb buffer, quick enough for any file or media server on your network. 

+ Use the utils to do a full erase and surface test.

[shakalnokturn]

Thanks for the replies, it looks as if I may have posted too fast:
Of the two WD5000LUCT drives I have one is working as expected and accessible on the Windows 7 OS, the other shows up with correct name in device manager but is listed as "Unknown - Not initialized" in disk management. It cant be initialized from there.

Having read somewhere that this model was factory locked by WD to only allow use in AV equipment I fooled myself into thinking that another firmware would solve the problem.

I'll try the WD tools and see if they get me any further.

[Wuerstchenhund]

Of the two WD5000LUCT drives I have one is working as expected and accessible on the Windows 7 OS, the other shows up with correct name in device manager but is listed as "Unknown - Not initialized" in disk management. It cant be initialized from there.

Having read somewhere that this model was factory locked by WD to only allow use in AV equipment I fooled myself into thinking that another firmware would solve the problem.

This suggests that the 2nd drive is either ATA locked (password locked) or might indeed use a modified firmware (which is possible, but unlikely because of the extreme price sensitivity of the settop box market).

Have you tried to access the drive under Linux? I also believe there are some brute-force tools for cracking hard disk passwords.

[magic]

Not familiar with Windows, but could it mean that there is simply no partition table on it?

[Jeroen3]

Try "diskpart clean" or erase the first few mb it with killdisk.

The main difference is probably just the platter topology or seeking algorithm which is optimized for multi-threaded sequential read/writes instead of short random read/writes.

I suspect it will behave terrible in raid

[Johnny10]

I have restored 2 of these drives from Direct TV boxes.
I used gParted on a Live Linux disk.
There are youTube videos on this.
This one looks similar to what I used.
The disks don't startup because they are in standby mode.

https://www.wikihow.com/Reformat-and-Use-a-Dish-Network-DVR-Hard-Drive-with-HDPARM-Tool

Did it a couple years back, same make and size drives.

[edy]

Wish I saw this post a few days ago when I gutted an old PVR/DVR cable box (see below). The drive was only 80gb so I didn't work too hard and ended up trashing it. I tried Gparted on Linux, at first it saw the drive and was going through a repartitioning to msdos, and froze. I tried to mount it again numerous ways but it kept saying read/write input/output errors. I tried wiping first and last part of drive writing all zeros. Nothing seemed to work, I attributed it to just being an old drive (circa 2004). Not a major loss but still would have enjoyed being able to "hack" this thing. Did I even have a chance or was I way out of my league?

[magic]

Try to get SMART data from it.

[Halcyon]

Are you sure it's the firmware?

Some older power supplies provide 3.3 volts on a specific pin which causes the drive to never initialise, it's known as the "power disable feature". The fix is insulating (or cutting) that pin on the hard drive power connector, changing power supplies or using a power adapter/splitter cable that only supplies 12 and 5 volts to the drive. If you google the relevant keywords, there are plenty of articles and photos about this issue.

There is a document from WD which addresses this issue: https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/collateral/tech-brief/tech-brief-western-digital-power-disable-pin.pdf

From WD: Legacy SATA power cables used P3 (Pin 3) to supply 3.3V power to the HDD. The new feature uses P3 (Pin 3) to perform a hard reset. So if you plug a new drive into an old system... P3 (Pin 3) may be hard wired to keep the drive in “Hard Reset” mode, so that the drive will never spin up. Changing the power connector effectively removes power from P3 (Pin 3), and allows the drive to spin up normally.

[NiHaoMike]

From WD: Legacy SATA power cables used P3 (Pin 3) to supply 3.3V power to the HDD. The new feature uses P3 (Pin 3) to perform a hard reset. So if you plug a new drive into an old system... P3 (Pin 3) may be hard wired to keep the drive in “Hard Reset” mode, so that the drive will never spin up. Changing the power connector effectively removes power from P3 (Pin 3), and allows the drive to spin up normally.

Sounds like bad design, what they should have done was make the reset active low with a pullup, so it has to be pulled to ground to do a reset.

[Halcyon]

From WD: Legacy SATA power cables used P3 (Pin 3) to supply 3.3V power to the HDD. The new feature uses P3 (Pin 3) to perform a hard reset. So if you plug a new drive into an old system... P3 (Pin 3) may be hard wired to keep the drive in “Hard Reset” mode, so that the drive will never spin up. Changing the power connector effectively removes power from P3 (Pin 3), and allows the drive to spin up normally.

Sounds like bad design, what they should have done was make the reset active low with a pullup, so it has to be pulled to ground to do a reset.

Well, just like Western Digital's attempt at hiding shingled magnetic recording on consumer drives, it's just another "feature".

[NiHaoMike]

Well, just like Western Digital's attempt at hiding shingled magnetic recording on consumer drives, it's just another "feature".

I thought it was Seagate who is infamous for slow SMR technology.

[Halcyon]

Well, just like Western Digital's attempt at hiding shingled magnetic recording on consumer drives, it's just another "feature".

I thought it was Seagate who is infamous for slow SMR technology.

Seagate and Toshiba both have SMR drives but I believe they included it in their specs. WD chose to omit it from technical specifications. Furthermore their WD Red "NAS" drives used SMR in their 2-6 TB models which causes problems with many RAIDs during rebuilds, particularly if you're using ZFS. This pissed a lot of people off. Only the Red Pro and Purple drives didn't use SMR, all the rest of their product series did (across various models).

The complete list of which WD drives use SMR is here: https://blog.westerndigital.com/wd-red-nas-drives/

Also, sorry for editing your post. The "Modify" and "Quote" buttons are next to each other.

[Twoflower]

A friend of mine tried to upgrade his set-top box with a new HDD. It turned out the box wasn't happy with the new drive but before complaining it set a ATA-drive password. So it was useless after that try.

The solution was a bit unorthodox: Connect the HDD to the set-top box, power the box up. Now disconnect only the data cable and connect the HDD data to the PC and clear the ATA password. That works because once the password is set it opens the drive until the next power down (or request via ATA command). Of course you need to be a bit careful to do that.