HDD data recovery questions and catching up

[asdfqwer426]

Hello, I've been out of the ps3 homebrew scene for quite a while. since around march of 2011 i believe (the last multiman update i have saved is 1.16). i've just been too busy with school and other things to play games or mess with my PS3 at all. since then i've mostly used my system for playing movies and the occasional emulator game.

around 4-5 months ago my CECHA system (60gb, backwards compatible with upgraded 500GB HDD) got a YLOD. at the time i was too busy and poor to fix it, and also i knew that a reflow was only temporary, and i wanted a reball. long story short, i bought another still sealed CECHA system on ebay that was on firmware 2.4x, replaced thermal paste, moved to 19 blade fan, new thermal pads and the 231 power supply to make what i hope will be a very long lasting system.

since i have this new one, I decided to reflow my original CECHA system to try to get files off of it. (i've successfully reflowed other systems a few times before) however, this time the system turns on, but will occasionally have artifacts on the screen, and whenever i try to launch any games or homebrew, it hangs on a black screen. after doing some research, i've determined that my GPU is shot.

the issue now, is that while i was able to get my save files off, I have many backups of games on the HDD i would like to get off, but can't because file browser programs cause it to freeze.

so my question is, does anyone have any suggestions on how to get these files off? i've researched online extensively and the most i've found that sounded even somewhat optimistic is a post from over 4 years ago when PS3 firmware versions were around 1.5 saying they thought they could determine the encryption key by comparing two copies of an HDD backup.

I know i can't backup the HDD, since it can only be restored to the original system.

I have not read about any successful attempts to read the HDD using an enclosure and a computer. some said to use linux and that it would work, but i have not come across any success stories so i have not tried it.

I know the hard drives are keyed to the specific system so i can't just swap it, but does anyone know if i could put it in an external enclosure and read it through a file system browser on a PS3?

if the answer ends up being that I can't get the data, i wont be too heartbroken, but before i go through the lengthy process of re-ripping all the games i had on it, I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask.

also, I hope this isn't too lengthy, I just wanted to supply as much info as possible.

and lastly, any big updates to the scene in the last 2 years i've missed? I just dove back into it yesterday and I'm already on rogero 4.31 and have the latest multiman and 4.3x signed emulators. any other useful/cool homebrew i should look into?

thanks.

[indirect76]

There's really no way to get them off if none of your homebrew is working.

There was a proof of concept shown in August 2012 that would allow you to decrypt the hard drive with the console key, but there's never been a release of a compiled program that does this.