Hi there is one real life problem that I believe can be solved. There are just so many people in India doing DR at various levels.
Not every one can afford equipment. People who spend hard earned money buy tools which we know are very expensive.
I believe there should be a way to have 2x small dev boards that have SATA and Ethernet...Like a Banana-pi.
The small time computer shop fellow who doesn't have DR tools can have this Banana Pi and connect his HDD.

The DR Lab who has tools has another banana pi which connects to ethernet and converts the data sent by the remote guys Banana Pi which is happening over ethernet. This sata port from pro-Dr guys bananapi can be connected to DFL MRT or other tools (can risk your pc3ks) and get FW access remotely.

This I believe is a good idea for the following reasons
1)No physical delivery of the HDD is involved. Saves up on logistics...Certain Indian DR guys are very notorious. They get the hard drive and almost never work on it for 15-20 days(may be overloaded by work or just creating illusions)
2)If some one says TeamViewer does the job, then it is necessary for the remote data recovery person to own TOOLS which is expensive
3)Even if remote DR guy purchases tools and seeks TeamViewer support, the DR professionals are so insecure that they at times
disable screen of the remote pc. Cunning remote DR guys use 2 ports of the graphic card and TV can only disable video over one port while the other works. With this device, the pro data recovery guy can mask his techniques.


So without physically having the hard drive, a small tool that converts ata over tcpip and FW can be read remotely on pro tools as if drive is locally connected is the concept.

Let me know if any one wants to work alongside.

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If only it were that simple. Buy a cheap MRT card, connect drives and have someone assist remotely.

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Luke
RAID Data Recovery

Hi There,
if only after studying 4 years of engineering (Bachelors in electronics and TELECOMMUNICATIONS ). Studying laplace,fourier,DTSP,Signals and systems, computer networking and communications,analog electronics, digital electronics,eletromagnetic theory,control systems and what not, if I start calling things complicated and avoid taking challenge, then shame on me and any one who did engineering.

We are a 15 year old company in Mumbai with the highest reviews. We would never buy MRT and ask for support...Rather this sinister plan is to reach remote parts of India and fetch work in one way.

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But, would it not be cheaper to put a $300 card in a $500 system, throw on TeamViewer and simply assist them remotely when needed? Perhaps the internet connections are faster and more stable there in rural India than they are here in Canada, but I wouldn't even want to consider trying to work with a drive's firmware where it depended on the internet connection.

That said, let us know how you make out.

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Luke
RAID Data Recovery

I actually pitched this idea to Ace Laboratory years ago, but I don't think they really understood the concept I was trying to explain.

I suppose there's probably very little motivation for them since it might ultimately hurt PC-3000 sales. But, I've long wished to have some remote boxes tied to a PC-3000 channel that I could use for remote locations.

Perhaps it's good this doesn't exist though. If it did, there'd be a "DriveSaves" and "Kroll" in every PC shop in town.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

Hi folks. Being a long timer in the Professional Audio community ( Was a mix engineer and started off as 18 year old with a diploma in audio engineering in 2009)
I have eventually seen how big studios collapsed as small ones sprouted up due to availability of pro technology at a cheaper rate....However the technology in this filed will never go cheap only the fact is, there will be smaller places sprouting up any way.

I agree to the fact that 500USD MRT card can just solve the job equally by TV assistance etc.
However, starting off in the field of core communications, it will be good learning curve to bite off more than I can chew.

Also there are certain tools available off the shelf which do ATA---->USB----->TCP and try to fix firmwares remotely.
So this should be doable over a Banana Pi aswell.
@Sourcerer suggested me to go ahead with ISCSI and he is one of the kindest and sweetest person ive come across (Thanks to Fzabkar to route me to him)

I am not some one who is pro at computing, but definitely walking on the learning curve as fast I can

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I mean they could flash firmwares of a rover on mars from earth with a 15 min offset or more!
Right?

I have a better idea .... software only !

The concept is not new, i did try this already over the years.

There are 2 main things that you do need to target.

1 - RS-232/COM protocol over TCP (there are already sollutions for that)

2 - ATA over TCP.

I did some testing many years ago with another guy from this forum and there are comercial sollutions available for the first.

Idea would be for some drives like old ST-10 seagates you would plug your ttl adaptor to the drive and run a software that would allow over TCP to "tunnel" the data to my PC-3000, SeDiv, HRT, whatever .... On my end i would be running something that would "emulate" a real open COM port but on that port the data would go to the tunnel connected to your computer on the other side of the world an i would get data from your TTL adaptor. With this i could for example unlock, backup firmware, load from loader, etc and i wouldn't need to use teamviewer as it have a big limitation, you can see what i'm doing even if i try to shut your screen down as it can be bypassed. Also i could use already available firmware tools and would just tunnel the data. I wouldn't need to know the terminal commands myself.

Again i did test this concept and it did work.

2nd concept is the same but for ATA.

You would run a low level driver (kernel) like the ones used by wdmarvel, sediv, etc and that driver would pick up your drive and allow tunneling of ATA commands over TCP-IP.

At my end i would have some sort of ATA terminal that would issue the commands over TCP to your machine.

This have a real value for unlocking !

Concept is not new as well. There were in the past people doing unlocking this way.

There is a big advantage, you will NOT SEE what i'm doing and the commands used unless you do set some sort of sniffing method and majority of clients will not do that.

I do find this to be very useful for unlocking services like this :

https://www.ebay.com/itm/ATA-Password-U ... 2674077475

Not many people do have unlocking services like you can see here :

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R ... d&_sacat=0

As far as i know i'm the only one with eBay unlocking service but this have a huge problem .... If you are international user you have to ship drives to me and if you are outside europe you have customs taxes and delays not to mention that sometimes drives are returned back.

I opted to accept mainly clients inside the EU for that reason. Now i did start testing with some concepts for some drives.

Assume that i do want to unlock your Toshiba drive. All that i takes is 2 VSCs. I issue the super on and the command to regenerate "S" and i'm done.

I decided to do that over TeamViewer and apart from the fact that some people ended up not paying (this is another issue but not related to this) you do need to either run a script or HRT terminal on the client computer using for example teamviewer and the person will see the VSCs that you will use to do the job meaning they will end up to know how to unlock drives as well.

To prevent that you can use HRT scripts that you would run with HRT_Demo and that would erase the script at the end. I did set a script to delete the *.ini with the script but even so someone might still run data recovery software and get the VSCs,

If you do have ATA over TCP even if it's just for very simple cases like unlocking you can make the client run your little software/driver and pick the drive. Then you will issue the ATA commands at your end and you can unlock drives at the client end. You can even use something like a TeamViewer VPN if you need to encrypt data over TCP so that people on the way to your client will not sniff your ATA commands, etc ...

Limitation would be that you do need to know the VSCs.

Of course there are variations as you could code a virtual ATA port so that you would send data from your SeDiv to a specific port and that port would be "virtual" and the data would be tunneled to your client low level driver connected to a phisical port with the drive you need to test.

This would be impossible to do with products like HRT and PC-3000 as they send VSCs to the CARD ports.

For example on HRT i can only use the tools on drives conneceted to the HRT card itself, i can't send the data/ATA commands to a random system port so at my end i would have to emulate a HRT port and the software wouldn't work as the license is on the card, etc .... But for SeDiv would work just fine. You would scan the ports it would pick up the virtual port created by the driver and you would use that port as if it were a normal system port with a drive on it.

Again Unlocking stations (on-line) did use the same concept. Also at some end RapidSpar can get VSCs over the "cloud" and use them on the drives plugged to the rapidspar unit. It have some advantges ...

Even so i do like to have the drives with me ....

Even if i can unlock over the net, etc ... for me i do love to have the drive phisicaly with me even more when repairing ....

If the drive is just fine and all that it's need is unlocking i would say that remote unlocking or remote changing ID, passport, etc it's ok .... If you are fixing a drive with firmware issues you do need to listen to it, see how it behaves, if it's scratching, power it on/off at will, etc ...

Software virtual drivers would save on hardware as well.

End user / client would not buy Banna-Pi boards, etc as it would take time to set them up ... For end user / client makes more sense for you to provide simple software that the client will run to grant you access to his drive for you to fix.

You can't controll power, etc but it's still usefull in cases that you do need to do simple firmware fixes over the net.

Regards.

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HELLO, Sorry for the late reply. Exams are just about to begin and I am held up with almost 79 odd assignments to be submitted.
Professors (who cant teach) are going to butcher me.

I and a friend of mine will be working on this project in december. Will post results.

BTW very detailed response Spildit... Thanks

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Thanks for your input !

I will be looking forward to read about the progress with this project !

Regards and good luck !

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