yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Shield Android TV General] BostonDan:
So I decided to try to revive my 2015 Shield Pro for S&Gs, even though my hard drive failed spectacularly. While I was able to update to the 8.0 OS, due to not having the correct encryption keys was limiting me (no update past 8.0 due to a new structure for the module) and I wanted to try to do a full revival for my own knowledge and fun.

So I broke down and opened up the original drive and discovered the drive head is the issue (I believe). AFAIK the drive platter is still good. As a result, I have ordered a replacement Seagate 500GB sshd drive ($11) to open up and swap my original platter into to try to read the encryption keys (as I only need 1-2 reads of the original platter - I plan to read just the first ~10MB to get the keys, and then I will try to read the full OS).

Replacement drive is coming next week. I will report back on whether this works once I attempt this.

Wish me luck.

Cheers,

B.D.
[Shield Android TV General] cerberusxd:
Super new to this but Etcher is only taking one of the .bin files from the backup. What about the other two files in the folder?

I also thought it could only be .img files too.
[Shield Android TV General] ivanovjohn2018:
I didn 't write about 2 files with the extension .bin . I wrote that you need to download the dump, and it has the .img extension. On the forum, they asked about an image for a console with 500Gb, and I answered where to find it and how to install it)))))))
[Shield Android TV General] cerberusxd:
The link provided put me to post #324. I downloaded the zipfile called "backup".

There's 3 files, firstpart, lastpart and lastpart2TB. They are all .bin files, there are no .img extension files.
[Shield Android TV General] ivanovjohn2018:
https://xdaforums.com/t/guide-linux...-size-only-for-satv-pro.3440195/post-76827481 :ROFLMAO:
[Shield Android TV General] usamartinez:
Hi

I just want to make sure before I order the drive and go through the whole process.

My Nvidia Shield Pro 500gb drive is bad, gone. No backups, nothing.

By going through this process I could get my 500gb drive back, with Netflix and all?

Thank you

Mario
[Shield Android TV General] ivanovjohn2018:
unfortunately not.
[Shield Android TV General] BostonDan:
You could try to get a repair shop to swap the platter, assuming it is the head that is damaged on the drive and then clone it. Not sure it is worth the money.

But your specific digital keys are on that drive and without them you cannot upgrade past 8.0.1 IIRC ..

Cheers,

B.D.
[Shield Android TV General] usamartinez:
Hi B.D

Thank you for your reply

I don't have the original drive, I thought it wasn't worth saving.

I purchased the 2019, 16gb, but it is not the same as having the 500gb drive.

Thanks

Mario
[Shield Android TV General] craigasmith09:
What format does the samsung need formatting to before this is done please?
[Shield Android TV General] ivanovjohn2018:
ext4
[Shield Android TV General] dmfh:
Dang! Thanks for the info.

So just to confirm the ssd can be formatted to ext4 and does not

need to be in a factory fresh state before copying the files?

I did the dd work via ubuntu without formatting the ssd first am hoping this won't cause me issues. thx for your help and time.
[Shield Android TV General] lvratcliff2:
anybody still doing this?
[Shield Android TV General] PlutoDelic:
Astonishing stuff @kavey , not many people can troubleshoot things like that.
[Shield Android TV General] DiSTURBED_oNE1:
I wanted to share my experience so far which not going as well as @kavey .

My reason for wanting to upgrade to an SSD was for performance, but mainly because I didn't want to wait until the HDD died or corrupted before upgrading as I didn't want to spend hours trying to get it back up and running.

Well, my plan backfired.

I am days into this :(

I purchased a Samsung 870 EVO 500GB SSD.

Reading through the posts on here, it looks like I purchased the right SSD as I assume power draw shouldn't be an issue.

First I tried cloning the HDD to the SSD directly using HDD Raw Copy Tool which took hours.

Put the SSD back into the Shield, black screen, no boot, no Nvidia logo nothing.

Checked all the cables, wires and re-connected them, same issue.

Took out the SSD and this time I tried using DD to clone the SSD directly through my mac (using a USB to SATA adapter).

Put the SSD back into the Shield, same issue, black screen, no Nvidia logo.

At this point I was getting nervous so I put the original HDD back in, and that booted straight away :)

So I found this thread and saw @kavey experience with DMDE.

Downloaded it, and this time I cloned the HDD to a .bin image.

Then I restored the .bin image to the SSD, each time I was using the SATA connection on the motherboard of my PC.

Put the SSD back into the Shield, tried again, black screen, no Nvidia logo, no boot.

With the SSD in the Shield, I tried getting to the fastboot menu so I could try recovery mode.

However, every single time I tried to get to the fastboot menu, it failed, black screen, nothing.

Getting nervous again, I put the original HDD back into the Shield and this time it wouldn't boot! Black screen, no logo, on the original HDD!

@kavey here is a screenshot of DMDE with the original HDD open, can you confirm if that file/partition structure is what I should be expecting?

Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

Now I am not sure what to do.

I download the ZIP file (via bittorrent) at the start of this thread and restored the start and end bin files using DD.

Put the SSD into the Shield, now I am getting the fastboot menu come up without me even pressing the shield button.

But selecting Continue or Boot Recovery Kernal does nothing, just says Booting Recovery Kernal... and does nothing.

So now what do I do?

I am given up trying to retain my data and just want to get my shield working again.

Is there an official recovery image from Nvidia I can download somewhere? Or a way to recover the device via adb or something similar?
[Shield Android TV General] kavey:
Hey sorry you are having trouble - yes that partition table looks correct, so assuming you had 0 read errors, your DMDE image should be good

As to why the black screen, many posts in this thread have mentioned this, some suggesting leaving it for a while then rebooting, but I think those instances the device did boot, but was just rebuilding cache, which would make sense for 'new' drives whereas a cloned drive should really just boot straight away

My experience was that my Shield worked every time (even with the bad drives) i.e. I always got the Nvidia logo then the circles and then full boot so I haven't experienced such an issue to try to resolve

Black screen and no fastboot could mean it's not seeing the drive at all (the shield doesn't have a ROM - everything is on the drive in those custom partitions) or perhaps HDMI issue. The only thing I can think is to ensure the cables are seated correctly (especially ensuring the tab on the sata connector is locked when the cable is put back) and undamaged - I was very careful with the small black connector as that has tiny wires and could get damaged easily especially if repeatedly pulling it and replacing)

As to rebuilding a fresh drive - I believe that is covered in the first post - the OP created a new drive using the developer image from Nvidia after building the partition structure but as I took the clone route, I haven't followed that process to be able to advise

I did use DMDE so that if I ever needed to take that route DMDE can extract the necessary firstpart and lastpart pieces as well as my own widevine keys but as I haven't needed to do that, I can't help on that process.

Edit: I see you have already created the SSD with DD and it booted to fastboot - from what I understand all you need to do now is to connect it to a pc and use ADB to flash the developer image. There is another thread on XDA (apologies on my phone so can't easily find it while editing) about using any size drive in the shield - that has more details on the developer image flashing process as I recall
[Shield Android TV General] DiSTURBED_oNE1:
@kavey thanks for your quick reply, really appreciate it.

0 read errors every time.

Tried waiting for 30 mins on black screen and then power cycling, same issue.

I have followed the instructions on this first post.

I used DD to image the start and end bin files.

However, when attempting to boot from this, I immediately get the fastboot screen and it won't boot normally.

When reading through this thread, it seems it's meant to normally boot.

It's not the HDMI path, it displays the fastboot screen just fine and CEC is completely disabled on the display.

I was very careful with this too and I thought I might have broken the ribbon cable somehow because of the boot issues.

However, using the start and end bin files in this thread it boots into fastboot every time so that would mean that the SATA connection is working properly as you said there is no ROM or DOM, although now I really wish they had one (it would make recovery easier).

I have tried all the steps in this guide (hopefully this is what you are referring to?):

https://xdaforums.com/t/guide-how-t...ld-tv-using-fastboot-hardware-method.3321404/

However regardless of the recovery image version I try, each time I get this error:

Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

FAILED: (remote: Partition write failed!)

Same error regardless of if it's the staging blob, the boot.img or the recovery.img all of them I get the same partition write failed.

Could it be because the start.bin and end.bin do not create the correct structure on the drive?

Is there a more minimal way of preparing a new vanilla SSD ready for recovery?

Also, how did you determine your initial SSD (Crucial) had the write lock turned on?

Could this be my issue with my Samsung 870 EVO 500GB?

I am lost about what things to try next :(
[Shield Android TV General] kavey:
Start.bin contains the bootloader with recovery/fastboot and other system partitions but not the full OS, so that looks like it has written fine - it's the last part that contains the custom GPT partition table (which is why it requires editing if the drive size changes from 500GB) - this is the most minimal way already

Perhaps try extracting the last part from your own image from the DMDE image - perhaps one of the lastpart's floating around online might be for a diff size drive? As you are using adb to flash you have to be bootloader unlocked as well otherwise the shield prevents flashing so that could be the issue as well

I doubt your drive is writelocked if you have managed to get the first part there, but to test it's just a case of trying to format it in windows and seeing if data writes to it successfully - crucial also has its own SSD software and Samsung has its Magician for SSD which have show diagnostic info and allow for resetting drives - i knew my crucial were writelocked when windows couldn't format and the crucial storage executive software couldn't sanitize (reset) the device to factory default
[Shield Android TV General] DiSTURBED_oNE1:
Can you point me in the right direction in regards to this, not sure how I achieve this.

When I run the command to unlock the bootloader, it says it's already unlocked.

I have used the OS tools to initialise and format the drive multiple times, so probably not that, but I am running out of ideas.

Are you sure it's not the full OS?

I read the first 20 pages of this thread and users were reporting it booted fine for them, the only issue that was reported was that Netflix wasn't working due to the ESN.

Wouldn't that indicate that it is the full OS?

I guess I am trying to determine what is the best practice procedure if one was needing to provision a completely blank replacement drive?

Surely NVIDIA have official documentation for this? and not have to rely on the community?

NVIDIAs official instruction readmes cover flashing the recovery image, however, it appears the assumption is they have their factory-installed storage inside the device and that storage is functional and without errors/issues.

You would think in a "recovery" scenario that it's highly likely there is an issue with the originally installed storage and that there would be a procedure if the storage had to be completely replaced.

Its frustrating because my original storage drive no longer boots either and I have no idea why.
[Shield Android TV General] ivanovjohn2018:
nvidia does not present the original keys to your device, either without neflix and official updates, or buy yourself a new one.
[Shield Android TV General] DiSTURBED_oNE1:
I was hoping that NVIDIA used a dedicated chip similar to Apple's Secure Enclave / TPM to store secrets.

I was unaware that keys were stored in the main storage.

That is disappointing and really affects repairability.

All I wanted is to replace the HDD with an SSD.

Unsure if I want to purchase a new Shield if this is the experience.
[Shield Android TV General] kavey:
Not in front of my PC until the weekend to be able to check the details, but essentially it's just copying the relevant sectors from your image file (the sector numbers to copy are the same as the DD process for lastpart) to a new file as a .bin (just a raw binary data file) and then using that file instead of the lastpart floating around

I'll update over the weekend when I've had time to check the sector numbers etc myself but in DMDE it's pretty easy to select a sector range to extract (same as the writing process)
[Shield Android TV General] eddieyee:
Thanks for this! If there's any way to do it with the old drive connected without making a full image, would be awesome. Mine is reading up to a point and dies due to partial hard drive failure, I know the first 3gb reads fine, but when I try to dd the whole drive to an image it dies part way through. Also, when I did try the OP dd image without the keys, it gets to the login and always fails. I've been reading it's due to the APIs not responding correctly anymore. Any way around this?
[Shield Android TV General] ivanovjohn2018:
interestingly , DMDE can be used to clone a soldered emmc from a 16GB set - top box ?
[Shield Android TV General] kavey:
No. DMDE is a windows program to clone/edit hard drives - only works for the Shield Pro as it has a 500GB SATA SSHD in it
[Shield Android TV General] ivanovjohn2018:
ok, but DMDE wasn't created specifically for Shield Pro?
[Shield Android TV General] kavey:
No it's just a windows hard drive utility, it has nothing to do with any Shield model, it is simply a utility that can image/clone/edit a hard drive. As the Shield Pro has a hard drive DMDE can clone it, that is all.
[Shield Android TV General] DiSTURBED_oNE1:
@kavey just want to say really appreciate the time you have taken to put those instructions together.

Sadly, while I was able to follow your instructions and create a start and end image as well as restore those images to my SSD...

My Shield is still not booting at all, just a blank screen (no nvidia logo).

I have scanned the drive after the restore in DMDE and the whole structure is there.

Do you think possibility there is something wrong with the bootloader?

The reason I think this is because when using the start and end images at the start of this thread, my Shield boots into fastboot.

So that would mean that bootloader is at least working.

But my images whether partial (start, end) or a complete clone is not booting.

Maybe the bootloader in my image/drive is NOT unlocked?

But the image posted here IS unlocked?

In terms of the partition structure, do you know which partition is the bootloader?

Or possibly the partition which stores the Netflix keys etc?

That way I restore the image from this post over the top of mine, but leave the partition with the Netflix keys intact and see if that boots?

Thanks again for your help, I think I might have to buy a new Shield soon as I am not getting anywhere :(

At least the new Shields have solid-state disks already.
[Shield Android TV General] kavey:
It's possible, but I can't troubleshoot an issue I haven't faced so tough to say for sure. I would try connecting it to a PC with ADB and see if it can see the device as a starter, but then that might be a whole new rabbit hole depending on the result

If you hadn't unlocked bootloader on your own drive then yes, the image remains locked - normally when you unlock a bootloader if forces a full wipe of the device, so if you don't remember doing that, your image probably isn't unlocked. But again this should only be an issue when using ADB to flash the device from a PC - ADB needs the device to be bootloader unlocked in order to be able to make changes to the device, such as flashing an updated OS.

As i just did a clone, i didn't unlock bootloader as it wasn't necessary for me.

I believe so, but I haven't used it to be able to say 100%

Again, I haven't done this or needed to, but I found this thread https://xdaforums.com/t/nvidia-shield-pro-widevine-keys-extraction-and-re-flashing.4203089/ which looks like the offset 0x2200000 - in DMDE this corresponds to the EKS partition from the DMDE partition list (I blurred out my data for obvious reasons).

This thread here might also be helpful as the poster seems to have had similar issues as you - https://xdaforums.com/t/bricked-shield-tv-pro-2015-version-stuck-in-apx-mode.3841024/ which also links this post from github that seems to have a full partition breakdown

nv-tegra.nvidia Code Review - tegra/prebuilts-device-nvidia.git/blob - tegraflash/t210/flash_t210_android_sata.xml

Looks like there are a bunch of partitions used for the bootloader - Android and ChromeOS use very unique partition structures!

Definitely worth a try, thats what that other poster in the thread did essentially.

Good luck buddy!
[Shield Android TV General] DiSTURBED_oNE1:
I can report success!

I finally managed to get a stable factory clean bootable Shield Pro (2017) SSD with my Widevine keys and serial number intact!

I couldn't have done it without your help and advice, so many thanks again.

For anyone else reading this later that runs into similar issues to me, here are the steps I had to perform in order:

1. Backed up as much of the original HDD as possible using DMDE, I managed a full bin dump, however, if you are having issues with the drive get as many sectors as you can.

2. Downloaded the start and end bin files from this thread (first-page torrent link).

3. Restored the start and end bin files to my 500GB SSD in the correct sector locations.

4. From the image created in Step 1, restored the partition labelled EKS only (to the correct sector locations) to the SSD, thus overwriting that partition which contains my Widevine keys.

5. With the image I created in Step 1 mounted in DMDE, I went to hex location 0xa0400C and copied the 14 characters contained there into notepad (this is the first 14 characters of the device serial number).

6. With the SSD mounted in DMDE, I went to hex location 0xa0400C and overwrote characters with the values pasted into my notepad and saved to the drive.

7. Put the SSD into the Shield and powered on.

8. The Shield finally booted past the Nvidia logo to the animated android logo, this logo sat animating indefinitely,I waited 15 mins and power cycled.

9. After the power cycle it booted into the first time setup, however I quickly found I couldn't setup the Shield because the firmware version was so old that it could no longer connect to Google/Play services regardless of what credentials I supplied.

10. Followed this guide to download the latest recovery image and tools to flash the Shield:

https://xdaforums.com/t/guide-how-t...dware-method.3321404/?utm_source=pocket_saves

11. I put the Shield into fastboot using the hardware method and followed the steps in Step 10.

12. I eventually got a Shield booting into Shield Experience 9.0.

I was now able to complete the setup wizard and authenticate.

13. Once I got to the Android TV home screen and quickly checked for Shield updates, I had to do this 3 times to get the Shield up to the current Shield experience version (this will be different depending on when you follow these steps).

14. Once it was fully updated, I went to the Google Play app, to my profile and then App updates and forcefully updated all the apps, there were 11 updates to do, many to the core system apps.

15. Tested Netflix, Prime etc all working!

DONE!

I now have a fully functioning Shield running on a super-fast SSD.
[Shield Android TV General] kavey:
Awesome you got it working!

Now you have a clean boot drive, I'd make a new DMDE image of that working SSD drive just in case you ever need it again, but glad it's all sorted nonetheless!
[Shield Android TV General] Roofus8658:
Success! Thank you kavey for your guide! I used a Samsung 870 500 gig drive and did a dd clone in Ubuntu. It took forever but it booted up on the first try. It boots much faster now and overall the box is much snappier. Netflix still works too.
[Shield Android TV General] Souai:
I just thought I would chime in as I also have this crucial bx500 drive but I didn't experience any of the issues you have experienced. Not too sure if there was some other reason for the issues you experienced, maybe a couple of dud drives? Could also be the ribbon cable not aligning properly with this drive to the connection point on the motherboard of the shield as I had this issue, plug seems to go deeper into the drive and I had some difficulty realigning the ribbon cable as it was slightly off (like 0.5mm-1mm).

Just did my upgrade over a week ago. Cloned using hddrawcopy, booted up first time, didn't experience any of the screen freezes some others have commented on after a clone. Has been running fine with no issues. I cloned to an image and then loaded the image onto the bx500, both devices were plugged into the SATA ports of an old PC. I tried using a USB to sata adapter but it was bugging out. I ran the updates as my 2015 shield pro was a fair few updates behind my 2019 shield pro and still no issues. I also cleaned and replaced the thermal paste during the process as well and I usually leave the fan set to cool rather than quiet.

The crucial bx500 500gb model does have an slc cache of around 32gb, drive speeds throttled hard when I tried to move some chunky files over. For my use this didn't bother me as I mostly stream.

And the power draw is a theoretical rated max of 1.7A. the Samsung drives have a theoretical max of around 1.6A. in real world usage, even with large transfers they don't generally get close to this and tend to be around 3.5w. I don't generally use the storage of the NVIDIA shield much, I mostly upgraded to avoid the constant whirring noise of the sshd that came with the shield and to speed up load times. Most of my usage is for streaming.
[Shield Android TV General] redbluegeo:
You guys saved my box thank you all! Here's my experience:

The old disk failed but i managed to keep a backup of the EKS partition with DMDE. This is the partition that holds the widevine keys.

1. Bougth a new samsung ssd and used dd to load the first and last parts from the torrent on the first post.

2. Booted the box into recovery mode (hardware method) and did a full wipe, it booted normally after that, but couldn't connect to google services.

3. Flashed this image from the nvidia site ( tried 7,8,9 none of them worked)

NVIDIA SHIELD ANDROID TV Pro Recovery OS Image 6.3.0

4. Used DMDE to copy the original EKS partition to the new disk.

After that, the box booted normaly and did all the updates to 9.1.1. It is now fully functional, i tested the below:

netflix

disney plus

geforce now.
[Shield Android TV General] Ryhorse:
I need help. My Shield doesn’t get past the NVIDIA logo. It keeps rebooting at the NVIDIA logo like

NVIDIA logo -> reboot -> NVIDIA logo -> reboot -> NVIDIA logo -> reboot -> NVIDIA logo -> reboot -> NVIDIA logo -> reboot -> NVIDIA logo -> reboot

I don’t kow what steps I possibly could have done wrong. What does it mean when the device keeps rebooting at the NVIDIA logo?