PS3 [Tutorial] HDD mounting and decryption on Linux

[Berion]

@Wildfire1 Of course possible, but in such way You will face another problem (depend on what You want to do) to give:

• direct access to HDD for VM (in VMware this is somewhere in menu as I remember but in VirtalBox You must mess with config files)
• direct access to disk image via SMB

If You are using Windows, I recommend You just to use Rufus to "burn" Mint with Cinnamon v19.2 64bit image to pendrive and boot computer from it. On Windows 8, 8.1 or 10 this could be a little annoying because You must first turned off Fast Boot or it won't let You go to UEFI menu (to turned off Secure Boot because as I remember Mint will not boot with SB, but I could be wrong) or quick boot menu (often under F8 button; press before OS start right after POST) to choose booting media. So, run cmd.exe as administrator then type

powercfg hibernate off

This was under GUI in old control panel but was removed in Windows 10 2019-03 update...

If You using macOS, then I don't know any tools and procedures to booting foreign OS.

 

[Wildfire1]

How would I be able to mount it in Linux Mint when its running on a virtual machine such as Virtual Box?

Sent from my LG-TP260 using Tapatalk

 

[Berion]

Which data interesting You? Real PS3 HDD or it's image somewhere on i.e one of the windows partitions with NTFS?

And what You want get from PS3HDD? Because if You need to read some data only from dev_flashes or dev_hdd0 then easier way would be for You HDD Reader (windows version, CLI application), for which @aldostools made GUI.

 

[Wildfire1]

Actual PS3 HDD as I'm hoping to dump a copy of its entire contents for use with some projects I've got on the side plus I'm wanting to test some theories.

Sent from my LG-TP260 using Tapatalk

 

[Berion]

So then, You must read how to provide VBox a real HDD instead of his own images (it is possible but needs editing client config files, unfortunately I don't remember the details). Eventually, dump PS3 HDD as sector by sector copy, convert it to *.vhd or static *.vdi and attach in Vbox menu as another virtual disk.

For fun with PS3 tables I strongly recommending SATA<->SDXC controller. Minimum size is 4GiB. Just FYI.

 

[someguy]

Has anyone gotten the ufs2 partition to be mounted as writable?

 

[Berion]

In first post You have tutorial how to write to PS3HDD on Linux. I didn't merge it with tutorial about decrypting/mounting ro because it is a little problematic and we have three ways to do it, all have some issues.

I'm working in free time on, let's say, different approach but this will take some time. In short my idea is to expose mapper with "gameos partition" as nbd and mount it on FreeBSD (from VM). Complicated and sick, but 100% safe as UFS2 is native fs of this system family.

The best way would be taking port of the HDD Reader for Linux and invest some time to add normal write support but I'm not a programmer, especially for such time consuming, tedious (qa tests) and hard task.

 

[Wildfire1]

One of the things I want to do is use live data from the actual system is for helping with RPCS3 as it might help with fixing bugs and such. Also with the right hardware, you could replicate the system and have one for OFW/HFW and CFW with one being an actual console and the other a virtual one or both virtual for testing out new mods and such.

 

[fastar]

Hi
Im not able to compile the UFS Kernel module i linux mint 19.2 with write enabled
Could someone help me
Thanks

 

[Berion]

@fastar You are not alone with this issue. Try possible solution written by @gmipf >>here<< (in theory Mint is the same as Ubuntu).

 

[mcshooter]

Hi! I'm happy to report back that using the latest version of PS3 HDD Reader, not the one from ps3tools, I could decrypt the HDD. Sucks that you can't write to it and recover the PS3 from a brick, but oh well, I at least got the data I needed. Thanks again for the help!

how did you get it I mean when I try the application it says no ps3 hdd connected

 

[Berion]

• Put ERK in the same dir as application.
• Run it as administrator.
• Avoid to much recurrence level (i.e try just "C:\ps3\hdd_reader.exe" (or whatever app is named in Your case)).
• Avoid connecting PS3 HDD by anything else than SATA directly to MOBO (no USB adapters etc.).

or just use Linux ;p

 

[beebul]

Hi guys - my first post..!

I have a corrupted 1tb HD that has all my games on..

OK I've got my EID key

I tried to use PS3Tools but it won't recognise the drive... on Windows 10. I've got it attached in a USB enclosure - should it be attached directly to SATA not sure how I can do that on laptop.

I've got a small media PC that I've installed Linux Mint on but don't seem to be able to get any further...
SDC is the 1tb drive... not getting anywhere with the Polish tutorial!

I've got HDD Reader .elf but not sure how to see the contents or even mount the drive... again it's plugged in with USB enclosure.

Any tips appreciated!! THANKS!!!

This is what it looks like in Linux..
NAME SIZE R0 Type
SDC 931.5G 0 disk > THIS IS WHAT I WANT??
-SDC1 16M 0 part

 

[Berion]

@beebul Hi. Welcome on our forum.

Based on screenshot above, there is no PS3HDD connected because "sd<letter><number>" is a partition but none of the partition of PS3 will be recognized just like that because of i.e encryption (device should be listed without any partitions i.e as alone "sdc"). So... If i.e "/dev/sda" is Yours main PC mass storage, and "/dev/sdc/" is PS3 HDD connected, than something is wrong caused by USB enclosure or You just overwrite it, making 16MiB partition (making seriously damage to original logic and making data retrieving a lot harder).

BTW: What kind of corruption You have in mind? What did You did/what exactly happened? Describe everything from the moment of disconnect it from PS3 until this day.

 

[beebul]

@beebul Hi. Welcome on our forum.

Based on screenshot above, there is no PS3HDD connected because "sd<letter><number>" is a partition but none of the partition of PS3 will be recognized just like that because of i.e encryption (device should be listed without any partitions i.e as alone "sdc"). So... If i.e "/dev/sda" is Yours main PC mass storage, and "/dev/sdc/" is PS3 HDD connected, than something is wrong caused by USB enclosure or You just overwrite it, making 16MiB partition (making seriously damage to original logic and making data retrieving a lot harder).

BTW: What kind of corruption You have in mind? What did You did/what exactly happened? Describe everything from the moment of disconnect it from PS3 until this day.

Thanks!

So my PS3 was running Rebug with a 1Tb hard disc.. I uninstalled some games and I had read that you need to run the PS3 disc scan (from safe mode) to reclaim disk space. However when the disk scan ran it kept sticking on 31% and then failing. So it was stuck in a loop.. I assumed that because it was stuck at the same point there was a sector fault that might be repairable...?

I thought that I could run a disk scan in windows by putting the drive into an enclosure but windows didn't recognise the drive. I tried a block check on Linux but that was running for hours and I had to disconnect. So at this point I have a small media PC with Linux mint (not sure it can be cracked open to connect the drive via SATA) and a Windows 10 laptop!

Windows with PS3 tools can't see the drive... and Linux reports the disc as in the screenshot above.

Thanks for any tips - the disc was nearly full of games I'd ripped and then gave the physical copies to goodwill!!

 

[Berion]

You don't need any disk scan (there is no such option in recovery menu) after deleting any content whatever by XMB or by homebrew application. At least until You don't stop this operation by force (i.e turning of the console by button on the back) or be impatient and turn off console by menu before she shadowly finish deleting stuff which You ordered her (that's stupid shit was introduced in some 4.xx firmware lines by Sony and in some cases user could end with deleted data but not freed allocated space...).

Windows doesn't have any build-in tools to scan the surface, only file systems.

Windows for sure saw Your PS3HDD, but this doesn't mean that he show You D drive, E drive, F drive etc. because disk is encrypted so for him (and every other operation systems including Linux) it is an empty drive. On top of that, there are many partitions as You can see in screenshot in first post and only few of them have FAT family file systems which Windows could understand.

I think You did more with this HDD than You wrote. ;p Look at here, open the tutorial: https://www.psx-place.com/threads/tutorial-fixing-windows-disk-initalization.27599/ and tell us if You saw the windows from first page, and click Ok. If both answer is yes, You made Your life very hard.

Also, could You paste the results from below code?

hexdump -C /dev/sdc | head -32

 

[beebul]

You don't need any disk scan (there is no such option in recovery menu) after deleting any content whatever by XMB or by homebrew application. At least until You don't stop this operation by force (i.e turning of the console by button on the back) or be impatient and turn off console by menu before she shadowly finish deleting stuff which You ordered her (that's stupid shit was introduced in some 4.xx firmware lines by Sony and in some cases user could end with deleted data but not freed allocated space...).

Windows doesn't have any build-in tools to scan the surface, only file systems.

Windows for sure saw Your PS3HDD, but this doesn't mean that he show You D drive, E drive, F drive etc. because disk is encrypted so for him (and every other operation systems including Linux) it is an empty drive. On top of that, there are many partitions as You can see in screenshot in first post and only few of them have FAT family file systems which Windows could understand.

I think You did more with this HDD than You wrote. ;p Look at here, open the tutorial: https://www.psx-place.com/threads/tutorial-fixing-windows-disk-initalization.27599/ and tell us if You saw the windows from first page, and click Ok. If both answer is yes, You made Your life very hard.

Also, could You paste the results from below code?

hexdump -C /dev/sdc | head -32

Thanks - I haven't deliberately made a partition or even tried to write to the drive but maybe it was done by accident.

I've attached the hexdump

Praying it's not bad news!

 

[Berion]

Extremely bad news. You don't have PS3 partition table there, so You cannot decrypt it or do anything with it in such state by the standard methods involving ready to go apps. On those sectors should be "random" data, and You have GPT. But for sanity check, You should try direct connection via SATA, doing the same hexdump, and be sure choosing PS3 HDD (it not always be "sdc").

Current assumptions:

1. disk have overwritten partition table (based on above log)
   
2. disk have damaged UFS2 (based on Your first comment)

For this recovering data is still possible but will be very space consuming, because You need simultaneously running Windows 7 or newer, have connected both mass storage media (one from PS3 and one for disk images, in Your case, You need HDD ~4TiB). The plan is:

1. make sector by sector uncompressed image
2. restore to it original partition table
3. decrypt this image
   
4. extract from it UFS2 partition
5. recover data from partition image via any tool which understand this fs and praying to God that damage is not done to fs table

No one before doing it. So You can be pioneer under my eye.

 

[beebul]

Extremely bad news. You don't have PS3 partition table there, so You cannot decrypt it or do anything with it in such state by the standard methods involving ready to go apps. On those sectors should be "random" data, and You have GPT. But for sanity check, You should try direct connection via SATA, doing the same hexdump, and be sure choosing PS3 HDD (it not always be "sdc").

Current assumptions:

1. disk have overwritten partition table (based on above log)
   
2. disk have damaged UFS2 (based on Your first comment)

For this recovering data is still possible but will be very space consuming, because You need simultaneously running Windows 7 or newer, have connected both mass storage media (one from PS3 and one from disk images, in Your case, You need HDD at least 4TiB). The plan is:

1. make sector by sector uncompressed image
2. restore to it original partition table
3. decrypt this image
   
4. extract from it UFS2 partition
5. recover data from partition image via any tool which understand this fs and praying to God that damage is not done to fs table

No one before doing it and chance of cusses is rather medium. So You can be pioneer under my eye.

Okay thank you! I've decided to give up - I've put the original PS3 120gb drive in and installed Rebug. I've actually got a lot of save games on this drive and it would be great if i could just clone the contents of this drive to the formatted 1TB drive..

Is this safe to do and if so what is the best approach?

I will try and use raw SATA connection first just to be content that i have lost everything!

I'll try later going watching Fatboy Slim now!

Cheers man

 

[Berion]

I've decided to give up

Be a man and fight. Reclaim Your data. ;p

it would be great if i could just clone the contents of this drive to the formatted 1TB drive...

Cloned no, but You can copy any data i.e to PC, put back this 1TiB drive, formatting it and copy all needed data back to this PS3 (via pendrive, FTP client, whatever).

Is this safe to do and if so what is the best approach?

It is not safe because we don't know what cause Your problems in the first place. Check S.M.A.R.T. Maybe this HDD is dying and his destiny is trash can or neclace for nerdy girlfriend.