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I definitely think it's a good idea. The other week my girlfriend's Western Digital external drive stopped working, I wanted to open it to figure out if it was

by simias 6y ago

I definitely think it's a good idea. The other week my girlfriend's Western Digital external drive stopped working, I wanted to open it to figure out if it was the drive itself or the sata-to-USB logic. Took me 20 minutes to open the case, and I damaged it significantly in the process. Turns out that it was only the USB adapter that was out of order, I bought a cheap-o USB 3 case and now it works again. Yesterday I wanted to fix the light on a USB wallsocket I have, I gave up because after 10 minutes I couldn't figure out how to even open the thing up. I tried squeezing it, tapping it in various parts, prying at various seams, nothing would give. That being said, I really wonder how you could regulate this easily. Lack of screws could be argued to be beneficial for aesthetics for instance. Modern smartphones are a pain to repair in no small part because size is very important so everything is crammed together, and highly integrated components are usually smaller and yield better economies of scale. I think it's a good idea, but I'm really not sure how it could be implemented well.

bowl 6y ago
In my opinion, I think the best way to implement this is something like the repairability labels, like how it's done in the EU. Not sure how to pick who gets to decide what goes on the labels, however.
MayeulC 6y ago
> Yesterday I wanted to fix the light on a USB wallsocket I have, I gave up because after 10 minutes I couldn't figure out how to even open the thing up. I tried squeezing it, tapping it in various parts, prying at various seams, nothing would give. Did you try looking up the manual? Even if the steps for removing it aren't documented, you can often walk the installation steps in reverse order. Visible serial + some documentation would help a great deal.
intricatedetail 6y ago
Classic WD. So you dodged a bullet. I had WD drive that USB board failed and that board contained encryption key. So I lost data even if I could install the board from other drive. And they had a nerve to advertise this as a feature pro consumer! (It encrypted the data even if you didn't turn encryption on)
- ziml77 6y ago
  That's some serious bullshit logic from them. What the fuck does encryption do if the key is stored right next to the drive?
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    The key is always stored with the data either on the drive itself in an unencrypted hidden partition or on an attached storage/security coprocessor. The key is encrypted with a KEK which is derived from a users password. What many of these encrypted drives do is just always run the encryption but with either a default key which is all zeros or with an unencrypted key until the user enrolls into the encryption feature at which point the key will be encrypted with their password or fingerprint.
- freedom42 6y ago
  Wow that's actually really sad. Imagine that happening to people without backups (means many regular people). The way I do it is I format the drive on Linux. Then format it as ext4 with LUKS encryption. Were you on Windows?
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    The encryption is transparent, the key is stored on a security coprocessor if the encryption isn’t “turned on” the key simply isn’t encrypted with a KEK which is derived from your password. Sometimes the default key is also all zeros/ones until the user has initialized the encryption function at which a random key is generated and encrypted with a KEK. W/E you format the drive with or too or how you use it doesn’t matter, you don’t have raw access to drives anymore (sectors, clusters etc don’t mean anything anymore) with or without encryption the controller basically emulates an “ideal drive” to the OS and does it’s own thing.
michaelt 6y ago
> USB wallsocket [...] I couldn't figure out how to even open the thing up. In my country, wall sockets are often riveted closed, because (a) they gotta be cheap, and (b) they've got a bunch of screw terminals, and they're worried with any more screws some dumbass will undo the wrong ones.
rasz 6y ago
Lucky, Seagate external drives integrate USB bridge on hdd pcb, there is no sata, you would have to desolder bga chip and tap pcb traces.

by simias 6y ago

bowl 6y ago

In my opinion, I think the best way to implement this is something like the repairability labels, like how it's done in the EU. Not sure how to pick who gets to decide what goes on the labels, however.

MayeulC 6y ago

> Yesterday I wanted to fix the light on a USB wallsocket I have, I gave up because after 10 minutes I couldn't figure out how to even open the thing up. I tried squeezing it, tapping it in various parts, prying at various seams, nothing would give. Did you try looking up the manual? Even if the steps for removing it aren't documented, you can often walk the installation steps in reverse order. Visible serial + some documentation would help a great deal.

intricatedetail 6y ago

Classic WD. So you dodged a bullet. I had WD drive that USB board failed and that board contained encryption key. So I lost data even if I could install the board from other drive. And they had a nerve to advertise this as a feature pro consumer! (It encrypted the data even if you didn't turn encryption on)

ziml77 6y ago
That's some serious bullshit logic from them. What the fuck does encryption do if the key is stored right next to the drive?
- dogma1138 6y ago
  The key is always stored with the data either on the drive itself in an unencrypted hidden partition or on an attached storage/security coprocessor. The key is encrypted with a KEK which is derived from a users password. What many of these encrypted drives do is just always run the encryption but with either a default key which is all zeros or with an unencrypted key until the user enrolls into the encryption feature at which point the key will be encrypted with their password or fingerprint.
freedom42 6y ago
Wow that's actually really sad. Imagine that happening to people without backups (means many regular people). The way I do it is I format the drive on Linux. Then format it as ext4 with LUKS encryption. Were you on Windows?
- dogma1138 6y ago
  The encryption is transparent, the key is stored on a security coprocessor if the encryption isn’t “turned on” the key simply isn’t encrypted with a KEK which is derived from your password. Sometimes the default key is also all zeros/ones until the user has initialized the encryption function at which a random key is generated and encrypted with a KEK. W/E you format the drive with or too or how you use it doesn’t matter, you don’t have raw access to drives anymore (sectors, clusters etc don’t mean anything anymore) with or without encryption the controller basically emulates an “ideal drive” to the OS and does it’s own thing.

michaelt 6y ago

> USB wallsocket [...] I couldn't figure out how to even open the thing up. In my country, wall sockets are often riveted closed, because (a) they gotta be cheap, and (b) they've got a bunch of screw terminals, and they're worried with any more screws some dumbass will undo the wrong ones.

rasz 6y ago

Lucky, Seagate external drives integrate USB bridge on hdd pcb, there is no sata, you would have to desolder bga chip and tap pcb traces.