Re: Need info on an external USB drive

On Friday 23 Jul 2010 21:27, while playing with a tin of spray paint,
Will Honea painted this mural:

A friend of my daughter just brought me an external USB drive she had been
using for saving a bunch of pictures on a Windows laptop that went tits-up a
few weeks back. She replaced the laptop with an Apple laptop - new, model
unknown other than it is an Intel based machine. She can't get the pictures
off the USB drive (SURPRISE!) and wants me to help.

The drive is a SimpleTech 320GB external unit. It mounts just fine under
11.3 and hwinfo identifies it as a Hitachi HTS545032B9A300. The root
directory appears to contain some OEM software to use the drive as a backup
device (folders/programs like "getting started with Apple" and "getting
started with Windows" plus a bunch of only vaguely identifiable folders and
files. The format appears to be vfat (fat32) but if there are any .jpg
files they are stored in another format.

If it's the Signature Mini, they're very likely to be encrypted:

<http://www.laptopmag.com/review/storage/fabrik-simpletech-signature-mini-320gb.aspx>

Under the "Backup Software" paragraphs, it states the files are
encrypted, probably so that if you lose the drive, it's going to take a
little effort for the files to be read.

Before I start mucking with this, does anyone have any experience with this
equipment?

Nope.

My best guess is that she bought the drive when she was using
Windows and likely installed the Windows software on the disk. Unless
someone can suggest a better approach, I'll try installing the Windows
software in an XP VM.

It might be an idea to set up a snapshot before you install the
software so you can revert afterwards.

If that won't install, I also have an old Thinkpad I
can use for a testbed so I can get the software installed.

Not knowing squat about what the OEM programs do,

Other than lock you in to using their software because they store the
backups in a proprietary format?

I'd appreciate any info
about it before I go blindly along and potentially lose any data the drive
might contain. Anyone got a clue?

After reading your reply to mjt, my only suggestion would be to make
sure you image the Thinkpads drive, using something like clonezilla,
before installing the backup software, just in case there's malware
backed up on the drive that manages to become active.


Regards,
David Bolt

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