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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Terminal Commands
PostPosted: July 13th, 2009, 6:33 
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Joined: July 10th, 2009, 15:22
Posts: 21
But if Seagate, or another hard drive manufacturer, can offer a bootable CD which will update firmware, I would guess that they should also be able to program a bootable CD which will reinstall firmware, and also be able to deliver the appropriate commands to a damaged hard drive to power it down, or whatever is needed to prevent further "click of death" damage to it. So maybe that will be something to look forward to, as a free or cheap alternative to tools such as PC3000, HD Doctor and HRT(?).


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Terminal Commands
PostPosted: July 13th, 2009, 8:11 
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Joined: July 18th, 2006, 3:05
Posts: 7474
Location: ITALY
Yeah, sure... why not ?!? They have been even more smart : they have an internal in-house Data Recovery company that not only can handle (of course) their products, but also from other brands. Aren't they good ?!?


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Terminal Commands
PostPosted: July 13th, 2009, 8:26 
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Joined: September 2nd, 2008, 12:14
Posts: 446
Location: Austria / Europe
The firmware is data stored on the media itself. (Like all other data is stored on the media.)
Without the firmware there is no access to the drive - its not existing for the pc.
How should one be able to reinstall firmware if
- the firmware of the drive is
. . defect itself
. . or
. . the media has defects in the firmware area
and therefore the drive is not any more detected?

There is NO MAGIC CD possible and there is NO MAGIC CD available.

The Seagate CD with a firmware upgrade will only work, when a drive is
not yet hit by the known failures. Once the drive is defect you need a pro.

PERIOD
+++


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Terminal Commands
PostPosted: July 13th, 2009, 11:35 
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Joined: May 6th, 2009, 5:28
Posts: 116
Location: Somewhere near UK
mikefree wrote:
But if Seagate, or another hard drive manufacturer, can offer a bootable CD which will update firmware,..


Now think why they don't do this. I will answer this as well.

Because it would be like taking all cardiac patients to the transplant theatre, MURDER!!!

Cause there are a VARIETY of problems that can occur to a Seagate drive (or any drive).

So the DREAM ONE CLICK solution would be a DISASTER - hope you have a clearer understanding of firmware.

So, what is needed is DIAGNOSIS first then decision on POSSIBLE solutions, then implementation based on professional
knowledge.

SO, maybe you can understand better why people don't publish solutions so often because a DIAGNOSIS is needed
before the solution AND..........

Amateurs are not SO GOOD at diagnosis.

I really hope this helps to get a better understanding of firmware. :D


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Terminal Commands
PostPosted: July 13th, 2009, 13:09 
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Joined: July 18th, 2006, 3:05
Posts: 7474
Location: ITALY
Are there vacant careers at Seagate? :mrgreen:


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Terminal Commands
PostPosted: July 13th, 2009, 17:11 
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Joined: July 10th, 2009, 15:22
Posts: 21
Spildit wrote:
Search my old posts. I've talked allot about that subject already.
The adaptor is something like this :

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?s=a ... pic=128807

And i've posted the commands for the newer seagate drives on this forum too.
Just use the search function.


Thanks! Excellent stuff. :) On page 4 of that thread I just found a lengthy Seagate command reference.


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Terminal Commands
PostPosted: July 13th, 2009, 17:54 
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Joined: July 10th, 2009, 15:22
Posts: 21
Spildit wrote:

And I just found some more Seagate hard drive commands listed on page 44 of the above thread, including commands to list the other Seagate hard drive commands:

You can see all commands of your 7200.11 disc with this:
Ctrl+z
F3 T>/C
F3 C>Q
(List all commands of your hdd)

Check your lists:
Ctrl+z
F3 T>V1
F3 T>V2
F3 T>V4
F3 T>V8
F3 T>V10
F3 T>V20
F3 T>V40
F3 T>V80
F3 T>V100
If you have G-List entries you have bad sectors.

Ctrl+v = ToggleInterfaceCmdEcho
Ctrl+x = DisplayInterfaceAndRwCmdHistory


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Terminal Commands
PostPosted: July 13th, 2009, 18:03 
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Joined: July 10th, 2009, 15:22
Posts: 21
Spildit wrote:
And i've posted the commands for the newer seagate drives on this forum too.
Just use the search function.


Here is that list. It seems to be identical to the one that you just posted a link to in another forum, on page 4 of that thread:
Seagate 7200.11 Terminal Commands
seagate-7200-terminal-commands-t11926.html


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Terminal Commands
PostPosted: July 13th, 2009, 18:13 
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Joined: July 10th, 2009, 15:22
Posts: 21
What about scripting or making a batch file for seagate commands? Are there any instructions or advice about that? It seems like it would be useful to have a seagate hard drive terminal simulator program, so that people can learn all of this stuff without frying too many hard drives as part of the learning process. :)


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Terminal Commands
PostPosted: July 13th, 2009, 18:15 
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Joined: July 18th, 2006, 3:05
Posts: 7474
Location: ITALY
Happy tinkering and eventually damaging beyond repair your 7200.11 - you'll realize how simple is. What else to say?


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Terminal Commands
PostPosted: July 14th, 2009, 3:46 
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Joined: September 30th, 2005, 7:33
Posts: 849
Spildit wrote:

Download SeDiv software here :

http://sediv2008.narod.ru/



There was a Trojan horse in this program.... :roll:


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Terminal Commands
PostPosted: July 14th, 2009, 8:33 
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Joined: July 10th, 2009, 15:22
Posts: 21
BGman wrote:
Spildit wrote:

Download SeDiv software here :

http://sediv2008.narod.ru/



There was a Trojan horse in this program.... :roll:


Which Trojan horse and which program did you use to detect it? My anti-malware programs didn't find anything.


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Terminal Commands
PostPosted: July 14th, 2009, 9:21 
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Joined: July 10th, 2009, 15:22
Posts: 21
BGman wrote:
Spildit wrote:

Download SeDiv software here :

http://sediv2008.narod.ru/



There was a Trojan horse in this program.... :roll:


Yes you were right. ATA.dll is Trojan.Dropper/Game. Super Anti-Spyware found and removed it. Thankyou for warning people. 3 of my anti-malware programs found nothing so I guess one needs to use multiple programs to be safe.


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Terminal Commands
PostPosted: July 14th, 2009, 18:20 
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Joined: July 10th, 2009, 15:22
Posts: 21
An RS232 TO TTL ADAPTER is what's needed to access a command terminal for a Seagate hard drive. But how does one access the command terminal for hard drives made by other manufacturers? Does anyone know this?


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Terminal Commands
PostPosted: July 15th, 2009, 3:10 
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Joined: November 29th, 2006, 10:08
Posts: 7843
Location: UK
There isn't serial command terminal for all drive manufacturers.

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Terminal Commands
PostPosted: July 15th, 2009, 23:56 
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Joined: July 15th, 2008, 1:50
Posts: 95
I am very new to ATA commands , though i have complete seagate command set pdf , most of the commands are for advanced users.
I need to know some basic commands-
Head tests
Self diagnostics -- will help to test disk on site where disk cannot be taken out of customer premises.
LOW level format -
we can make a script for all these functions which will make use of these case senstitive commands easy.


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Terminal Commands
PostPosted: July 15th, 2009, 23:59 
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Joined: August 12th, 2008, 13:11
Posts: 3235
Location: USA
That's not quite how it works. You can run commands that you know and interpret the results, but there is not a "tell me what is wrong with you" command where it will think for a minute and then go "hmm, you need to replace the heads"

_________________
You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Terminal Commands
PostPosted: July 16th, 2009, 0:18 
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Joined: July 10th, 2009, 15:22
Posts: 21
learner wrote:
I am very new to ATA commands , though i have complete seagate command set pdf , most of the commands are for advanced users.
I need to know some basic commands-
Head tests
Self diagnostics -- will help to test disk on site where disk cannot be taken out of customer premises.
LOW level format -
we can make a script for all these functions which will make use of these case senstitive commands easy.


The free program MHDD allows you to deliver some ATA commands to a hard drive:
http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

Some hard drive diagnosis is possible using S.M.A.R.T. attributes:

S.M.A.R.T. attribute list (ATA)
http://www.hdsentinel.com/help/en/56_attrib.html

Wikipedia S.M.A.R.T.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Terminal Commands
PostPosted: July 16th, 2009, 10:02 
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Joined: July 10th, 2009, 15:22
Posts: 21
I've been trying to figure out which Seagate command will turn off Auto-Relocation (also called G-list remapping). According to the DeepSpar imager white paper, turning Auto-relocation/G-list remapping off is one of the reasons why people should buy their product. So far I'm not succeeding in figuring out which Seagate command does this. Does anyone know? (Below is a compilation of information from a few web sites:

http://www.deepspar.com/pdf/DeepSparDis ... paper3.pdf page 8

Disabling Auto-Relocation and SMART Attribute Processing

While the methods outlined in the previous section go a long way to obtaining an image of the data, other problems
remain.
When drive firmware identifies a bad sector, it may remap the sector to a reserved area on the disk that is hidden
from the user (Figure 3). This remapping is recorded in the drive defects table (G-list). Since the bad sector could not
be read, the data residing in the substitute sector in the reserved area is not the original data. It might be null data or
some other data in accordance with the vendor-specific firmware policy, or even previously remapped data in the case
where the G-list was modified due to corruption.
Moreover, system software is unaware of the remapping process. When the drive is asked to retrieve data from a
sector identified as bad, the drive firmware may automatically redirect the request to the alternate sector in the
reserved area, without notifying the system before the error is returned. This redirection occurs despite the fact that
the bad sector is likely still readable and only contains a small number of bytes with errors.

Figure 3: G-List Remapping

This process performed by drive firmware is known as bad sector auto-relocation. This process can and should be
turned off before the imaging process begins. Auto-relocation on a drive with read instability not only obscures
instances when non-original data is being read, it is also time-consuming and increases drive wear, possibly leading to
increased read instability.
Effective imaging software should be able to turn off auto-relocation so that it can identify problem sectors for itself
and take appropriate action, which ensures that the original data is being read.
Unfortunately, the ATA specification does not have a command to turn off auto-relocation. Therefore imaging
software should use vendor-specific ATA commands to do this.

http://www.mjmdatarecovery.co.uk/data-r ... rrors.html

Depending on the hard disk and how it handles bad sectors, when a hard drive comes across a bad sector, it is recorded in a table stored in the firmware zone of the hard disk drive (typically this table is known as a g-list or a grown defect list) and a spare sector is used to replace the bad one. The drawback here, is that if that bad sector was in the middle of a critical file, then chances are that file will no longer open, will appear corrupt, or if it was a system file, then the computer may not even start. When the number of bad sectors exceed the spare sector pool the drive will eventually fail completely or run very sluggishly.

http://www.grc.com/srrecovery.htm

Disable Auto-Relocation
Hard disk drives "heal themselves" by replacing defective sectors with spares. This gives the drive the favorable appearance of being "defect free", which is how the drive's manufacturer wants the drive to always appear. The problem is that the drive does this on its own, without asking or notifying, and in the process vital data is too-easily lost.
When a troubled sector is replaced by a spare,
that troubled sector can never again be accessed!
The FIRST THING SpinRite does when it starts examining and working with a drive is to completely disable the drive's built-in automatic sector relocation. This way the drive can't whisk the sector away the first time it's not easily read, and SpinRite can study the sector to recover its data as much as necessary. (And as you might guess by now, no other utility is even aware of this problem.)


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Terminal Commands
PostPosted: July 16th, 2009, 11:31 
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Joined: July 15th, 2008, 1:50
Posts: 95
thanks mikefree for taking out time.may be all novice will benefit from this info.


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