3guesses wrote:
Thanks very much Spildit, that has given me a LOT of material to work through. I have experience as computer programmer but none so far with firmware of any sort, so this will be quite a learning curve for me, but I always enjoy learning new skills. I've no idea where to start exactly, but the links you have provided sound interesting so they will be my first focus.
If I do manage to find anything useful I will report back.
Thanks again for all the info.
Ok, you can start here -
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=176(read all links)
Then get a decent FREE ATA terminal like this -
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=2297Get a drive that you don't care about and try some basic ATA commands (standard) like locking and unlocking the drive, etc -
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=1214Now go buy a very old WDC MCU based WD drive (NOT a modern Marvell based drive) Read the differences here -
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=86&t=2353Now that you have a BB type drive ED_xB you can get this tool here -
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=167&t=1719 and this will create scripts for you to use to retrieve the modules of your drive. You can run the script like this -
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php? ... =100#p9296 or run the commands one by one with your ATA terminal to fecth all the modules by hand !
If you are looking for some sort of "tool" and to work with modern drives you can for example get a modern WD drive - SATA and download this free demo : -
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=146&t=2435Now you can play with your firmware and download/backup ROM and Modules of your drive. Of course you can check the defects directly with the tool and you can check the defects on modules manualy ... Later you can buy the tool if you like it. Or you can try to search for free "pirated" WDR posted all over the net (use google). It will work only with older Marvell drives but it's better than nothing ...
If your goal is to learn and study the commands then start by checking ATA terminal. If the goal is to fix drives and hide/un-hide defects it's faster and more reliable for you to buy firmware tools for the drives that you need to "play" with and use those tools instead of researching the Vendor Specific Commands.
The tools will do the work for you. And no-one will "share" a huge amount of VSCs with you unless you do have some to trade but there are a huge amount of them already available for free on my site.
For example if you do get older Fujitsu the majority of VSCs for those drives are well known.
There are many VSCs here as well -
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewforum.php?f=202
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