Accessing USB-Stick Firmware's bytes

Help on how to use HxD.
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diegojargok
Posts: 1
Joined: 03 Sep 2021 15:31

Accessing USB-Stick Firmware's bytes

Post by diegojargok »

Hello people,
I got an usb-stick damaged by accidental removal.
I am doing as far research as it is possible to me to understand why.
I got so far to understand that some bytes of firmware data got overriden, but not all, particly the Write-Protect bytes.
I got this by downloading the manufacturing tools, sadly is not clear which version of the firmware should I use to repair those bytes.
I am attaching some images about this.
The tool is called GetInfo as part of MPALL toolset of a chinese manufacturer site.
The USB is an old kingston 16GB USB3.0

I wonder if you can help me to find and edit the bytes of "Write Protect Status" field using HxD.
Is it possible?
In that case I could use another USB Stick to check what is the correct value to set there.

To just try:
I Opened the connected USB drive.
I did a search for some of the values shown in GetInfo like "MPALL" (firmware name), "14966" (storage capacity), "MiniOS" (Partition name) to locate the offset portion of the raw data readed by GetInfo.
But I didn't found any, ending with an error result dialog "System error. Code 1117. It cant continue because an error of IO in device".
Therefore, I guess that this data is stored "somewhere else" in a firmware-sector which I don't know how to access.
Or Maybe I am doing something wrong.

And BEFORE you sayit, yes, one could just buy another one, but then I wont be able to learn anything from it.
Attachments
GetInfoOther.PNG
GetInfoOther.PNG (45.36 KiB) Viewed 8264 times
GetInfoPartitionSetting.PNG
GetInfoPartitionSetting.PNG (53.74 KiB) Viewed 8264 times
GetInfoInformation.PNG
GetInfoInformation.PNG (57.12 KiB) Viewed 8264 times
Maël
Site Admin
Posts: 1454
Joined: 12 Mar 2005 14:15

Re: Accessing USB-Stick Firmware's bytes

Post by Maël »

I would suggest using a software like TestDisk or some file recovery software instead of using a hex editor to try to fix the file system, if you don't know intimately how the file system / partitioning system works.

It's not something you can explain briefly, or without having all the information.

Make an image of the drive, then try to fix it with TestDisk, make an image of the fixed drive, and compare the two images. If you are lucky the changes are few and you can figure out what the issue was.
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