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Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
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How to hide first Sectors on hdd ?

September 26th, 2018, 13:53

So i have the drive that have right from the 0 LBA couple
bad sectors, and the rest of the drive is fine/smooth.
I had an idea to Cut the first few Gig with DCO or HPA and
then use as usual. But i tried HPA, and it cuts drive from the
back[ with hdat2].

Q: Is it possible and how to hide area Starting from 0 LBA ?

Thanks.

Re: How to hide first Sectors on hdd ?

September 26th, 2018, 16:36

The ATA standard provides an "address offset" feature, but I believe that these settings are volatile, ie they don't survive a power cycle. In any case, not all drives support this feature.

Re: How to hide first Sectors on hdd ?

September 27th, 2018, 1:29

Thanks,
will look into it.

Re: How to hide first Sectors on hdd ?

September 27th, 2018, 4:44

For different brands it's different. No easy solution.

Re: How to hide first Sectors on hdd ?

September 27th, 2018, 16:27

BGman wrote:For different brands it's different. No easy solution.

IIUC, the OP is looking for a universal method using standard ATA commands, not VSCs.

Re: How to hide first Sectors on hdd ?

September 27th, 2018, 22:29

in 1990 we used to use pctools for skipping 0 sectors.

But now have completly forgotten the procedure. Anyone can remember now????????????????

Re: How to hide first Sectors on hdd ?

September 28th, 2018, 2:56

longlife wrote:in 1990 we used to use pctools for skipping 0 sectors.

If you had an MFM drive, then you would have had to low level format it and enter the defects manually. These were printed on the label.

Re: How to hide first Sectors on hdd ?

October 16th, 2018, 6:27

HDD is HGST 500GB 5400RPM Z5K500-500 HTS545050A7E680
At starting mhdd, i getting for 30secs
"error reading partition table drive 01 sector 0".
I did try couple of times mhdd.erase and some of the lba at
beginning changed from UNC to "red".
Also to confirm that the rest of the disk is <3ms read.
I would like to learn, and this hdd is good for practicing, so
i will try your good suggestions. Thanks

Re: How to hide first Sectors on hdd ?

November 17th, 2018, 6:35

Did secure erase using PMagic and it went well, but
then booted into mhdd, and on F2 says that
'ATA Password locked'.

Re: How to hide first Sectors on hdd ?

November 17th, 2018, 6:40

hdat2 says security/enabled/high

Re: How to hide first Sectors on hdd ?

November 17th, 2018, 6:57

Gsmartcontrol says "ATA Security ENABLED, PW level HIGH, **LOCKED** [SEC4]" and
in dialog for 'secure erase' "not frozen"

Re: How to hide first Sectors on hdd ?

November 17th, 2018, 7:24

Unlocked device unsing hdat2 permanently, but now
now each sector shows error when i try to
F4 with mhdd. Before when i started scan from
100mil.lba scan was smooth at 110mb/s and no
slow sectors.
Is it a heads ?
Can i do something with that or only with the
special tools ?

Re: How to hide first Sectors on hdd ?

November 17th, 2018, 11:11

I did Shift+F2 = Unlocked [ did after power-cycle]
I keep detailed log of every step, so i have a record
of scanning with mhdd starting from 700mil.lba and
it did run smooth, and after ATA SE strait from 700
each lba 'Error'=UNC, but then i set 800m.lba and
it's ok. Not worrying about this disk= practicing on it, but
it looks like some parts of the hdd is ok and other
just UNC.
So i just want to understand, is it surface, heads ?

Re: How to hide first Sectors on hdd ?

November 17th, 2018, 12:50

Ok, thanks for lessons.

HGST 500GB 5400RPM Z5K500-500 HTS545050A7E680 - for parts/donnor

Re: How to hide first Sectors on hdd ?

November 17th, 2018, 14:54

You are right,
i got this hdd in that state[ for free] and
not sure if it can revived. So i will
not try to do anything more with repair.

Re: How to hide first Sectors on hdd ?

November 20th, 2018, 13:11

SOLD as donor pcb.
Thread is Done.
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