Very nice !
I think it makes efects...

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Best Regards

DIYer

Hi there, this is my first post in this forum, I would suggest that the guide and info from aimtrading have some picture, or diagram for clear view. As the title, 'newbie', perhaps some newbie quite confuse where these term are located, such as me

explained so well that this newb almost understands it!

so here are my newb questions then:

1) where can i get the Samsung firmware writer?
2) is there any Samsung firmware available?
3) is it possible to update/upgrade the firmware on a Samsung SP2504c drive form vt100-41 to vt100-50?
4) have i posted this in the wrong thread?

i have no real reason for doing this, other than my fetish for having the latest drivers and firmware for my equipment.

cheers,
Andre

I'm new to the board.... thanks for the info so far!

I had a drive or two every now and then that needs data extracted from it... now I just crashed my main drive and need of ton of things extracted. I figured I should start learning....

-JR

Your in the right place

I dont understand - you say above that normal commands cant read the SA - yet you say you can deduce the commands by reverse engineering the SA. How can you reverse engineer the (commands) to the SA if you cant read the SA in the first place?

Confused,

-Al

SA also means ROM. If you know how to read these and then what to look for you can glean a whole host of info from these.

<itch>

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<itch>
скратчи
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, you probably don't fully understand the situation. ... Mr Kipling

A few terms I have come across on here:

PSV
MCU
TSV

Anyone care to tell me what they stand for please?

Thanks in advance

-Al

hi all,

i am noob here, and i'm from indonesia.
i have a question,
how do i learn about ata command, am i have to learn assembly programing first or maybe something else?
please give me some advice.

thank you people.





*sorry for my poor english

You will need a lot of research, and may be ATA13 can be a starting point.

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My Forum

can you describe for me what is it mean?

http://www.t13.org

Various documentations are there.

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My Forum

thank you, thats what i need

cannot access this site

Hello friends.
I am a new bee to this site.I really appreciate the site, and all the knowledge it imparts to the world for free. Well i always heard from my dad, nothing is for free, but hdd guru is a free teacher,advisor, friend, and caring for its fellow members.
thank you very much for every thing you give us on this site and forum.

researchman.

Hi aimtrading!

Thank you for sharing! Very positive.

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Edsel
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Nice article
Althought I knew about the basics of the System Area and SMART stuff, but wasnt until I saw the PC3100 video on youtube and this article that I was aware of the multitude of firmware blocks

For completeness of this topic, its worth mentioning that certain modules can't really be reloaded from a library or from another working drive, as they are specific to the actual physical drive itself
eg defect lists (p-list, g-list), translator tables, adaptives etc

There may be tools to help recreate translators and defect lists etc
(although unless it regenerates 100% the same as before (unlikely?) then probally cant reliably access existing data, but should be able to reuse and 'reformat' the drive

A good overview of adaptives from http://www.q-lab.ru/en/en_teorfaq.shtml :

Every single hard drive goes through a very important phase of manufacturing — precise calibration. With very dense data storage on modern HDDs, even tiny shifts during manufacturing can lead to the total failure of the device causing the electrical components to give error. This is why the process of calibration consists of numerous operations with the purpose of selecting optimal functional variables; such as correction for much precise impulse positioning and a quicker seek-time as well as adjustment of electrical currents for shifting magnetic-resistant heads, witch leads to a stronger read signal in different parts of the disk surface; the write currents are also adjusted. Values found, also known as «adaptives», are stored as tables on the disk and device operation is impossible without them.

When I was learning data recovery, found the following info to be shared:

Modern disks normally have their firmware codes located on data platters and also the PCB board. If the firmware area is corrupted, the drive will appear to have failed even all the electrical and mechanical components are still fully functional.

* be recognized incorrectly in the BIOS, the computer will then often hang
* Drive powers up, but is recognized wrongly, sometimes with nonsensical characters, manufacture alias (Such as N40p for Maxtor 6Y and etc
* Drive powers up, but is not recognized /defected by the computer
* Drive freezes during booting up;
* Drive detect in wrong Capacity, such as 80 GB detected as 1Mb;
* be recognized as 0 bytes in size
* S.M.A.R.T error;
* Drive is locked by human error; such as Hitachi hard drive by a drop; it is a self protection method of HDD design;
* Drive clicking ;( it can be caused by firmware too, the heads try to read the SA on platters and can not positing
* run slowly make a regular ticking noise at start up

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Train yourself before you step into DR

MCU=Micro Controller Unit , most important chip on PCB.
PSV= no idea ( Pet Store Verified ? =))) )
TSV - no idea , but if u meen TVS=Transient Voltage Suppression diode, consider it a fuse. It will sacrifice itself in the event of a spike and die instead of another chip.