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I have a Samsung DVD player from around year 2010 I want to throw away. The device has an HD where I have some recordings from TV. I want to keep a clip that features an interview to my father in a local TV station. I cannot copy it to a DVD due to builtin copy protection system so I thought I could just remove the HD and plug it into my PC. As far as I can tell, it's a regular 250 GB Seagate mechanic drive with SATA interface and a FAT32 partition.

Windows 10 Home recognises the drive just fine, I can browse all directories and I can see several *.MPG files that probably have the data I need. However, when I try to open or copy such files I always get some kind of "Access Denied" error message. Windows explorer warns me that I need to grant administrator privileges to copy the file but it doesn't work.

If I mount an image of the partition (made with Macrium Reflect) it still exhibits the same symptoms.

How can this protection system possibly work? FAT32 does not have Access Control Lists and I haven't installed any driver or software from Samsung. I'm interested in both circumventing the protection (private copy is legal in my country) and having a clue about how it works.

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  • Have you tried Samsung Support?
    – harrymc
    Jul 14, 2019 at 11:46
  • @harrymc No, I haven't. Not sure though what could be expected from them. You hardly get any help from vendors with gadgets that are still under warranty and I'd be asking how to break their own copy protection in an 10 yo device.
    – Álvaro González
    Jul 14, 2019 at 12:13
  • Can you try with another OS, like Linux?
    – FedKad
    Jul 14, 2019 at 12:15
  • @FedonKadifeli Certainly, I guess I can try with a live DVD (what distro would you suggest?) though I first need to figure out how to plug all the wires at once.
    – Álvaro González
    Jul 14, 2019 at 12:18
  • Ubuntu 19.04 (tutorials.ubuntu.com/tutorial/try-ubuntu-before-you-install) may be recommended. I have mounted USB drives to Ubuntu (FAT* or NTFS) and the OS can access all the files on the disk with no problems. Even system-reserved hidden files and folders can by accessed and modified. Please, note that, a file system corruption on your USB disk, may be preventing accessing some files in Windows.
    – FedKad
    Jul 14, 2019 at 12:23

1 Answer 1

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I'm interested in both circumventing the protection (private copy is legal in my country)

Read the disk from Linux. If you don't want to install Linux, use a live distro in a USB stick (e.g. Ubuntu).

and having a clue about how it works.

No idea yet :)

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