Abstract: There is a need for law enforcement officials to examine the contents of long-term storage devices, such as hard drives. This includes even hard drives that are part of video game systems, such as Microsoft's Xbox. The hard drive on an Xbox is password protected or “locked”, making examination time consuming, as the password has to be “cracked”. However, upon the Xbox being powered up, the Xbox unlocks its drive. The present invention makes use of this feature and teaches systems and methods of allowing the Xbox (and similar devices) to unlock their drives, and then switching control of the drive to a second host.

Abstract: A protection device provides write-once, read many capabilities for computer long-term storage devices, such as hard drives. The blocking device is placed between a host computer and a storage device. The blocking device intercepts communications between the host and the storage device and examines any commands from the host to the storage device. Certain commands, such as commands that may modify the storage device, may be discarded. Additionally, commands that may modify the state of previously written storage areas on the storage device may be discarded.

Abstract: An improved high-speed password attacking device for finding the password of a long-term storage device includes a power supply, a control circuit, and an interface to the storage device. The control circuit submits potential passwords to the long-term storage device, resetting it as necessary. The storage device may be, for example, a hard disk drive or compact flash memory. The application specific device is physically small, is operating system independent, and has simple interface that is useable by non-computer professionals.

Abstract: A testing device to test how computer systems interact with computer long-term storage devices, such as hard drives. The testing device is placed between a host computer and the storage device. The testing device intercepts communications between the host and the storage device and examines any commands from the host to the storage device. The testing device may respond to an Information ID request from the host with predetermined data, not the storage device's actual data. The testing device may respond to a read or write command to a specific sector with an error message from a predetermined list of sectors and errors.

Abstract: An improved comparing device for comparing computer long-term memory devices such as hard drives and compact flash memory, to determine if they are exact copies. Our current invention is a stand-alone device. A user connects long-term memory devices he desires to compare to our device. Our device contains logic and circuitry that perform operations on these devices to determine if they are exact copies, including “hidden” areas, while protecting the devices from any changes. Our device has a very simple user interface. This simplified user interface makes it difficult and unlikely to use our device incorrectly.

Abstract: Our current invention provides a means to have full access to a long-term storage device attached to a tailgate device. A tailgate device is a device which bridges between different drive interfaces, see FIG. 1. Different interfaces may not have identical command sets. For example the USB command set does not support the IDE HPA command. Therefore a host may not be able to issue commands to have full access to a long-term storage device connected to a tailgate device. Our current invention overcomes this restriction in numerous ways. Referring to FIG. 1, the host may issue encoded commands to the tailgate device. The tailgate device decodes these commands and subsequently issues them to the storage device. For example, if interface “a” is a USB interface and interface “b” an IDE interface, the host may issue an encoded HPA command, which is not supported by the USB protocol.