Freecom password protection.

Question

A freecom drive USB (250Go) has been disconnected from MAC, even when system says: do not do that, it is still in use. After that reconnecting the drive to the Mac, system doesn't show the volume anymore.

When connecting it on a windows XP machine, a password seems to be necessary to read the disk but no password had been entered !

The disk is unusable:

Under MAC, when connecting the drive, I can see 2 new devices:

/dev/disk1
/dev/disk2 

I can use dd to copy /dev/disk2 to a file, which is detected as a CDRom, But when I try to use dd to make a raw copy of /dev/disk1 (the DATA I suppose), I got a input/output error. The disk utility of Mac OS X detects the drive:

Freecom support say: you cannot access data without password. So my question is, before trying to remove the software protection (there is a tool forthat), I would like to make a raw copy of the entire disk (for security reason). Is it possible? Is it a normal behavior to get a input/output error when trying to use dd?

Answer 1

The DD command can make a raw copy, but you will have to use the same command to restore it to another stick. However, if the USB drive is heavily protected, then DD will give you an error. If Freecom says you need to enter a password, then simply remember if you set up a password and then try again. In some cases, DD won't work at all if you don't unlock the drive.