Thanks, I got it.
1: At this time this is achieved via LBA scan. Here's an example (click to enlarge):
Attachment:
Atola Insight Damaged Head example (head 3 damaged).png [ 25.37 KiB | Viewed 17505 times ]
There's also automatic diagnostics that uses LBA scan to watch for timings. It will let you know if there's an issue with any head.
We will add functionality to test heads with vendor-specific commands at a later date (at this time this is a low-priority task, mainly because no one requested such feature).
2: Atola Insight does not have means to add defects to defect lists at this time (since this is more for hard drive repair, not for data recovery). Generally, at this time we do not plan adding features for hard drive repair, but only those that help people recover data. This may change in future, once we finish developing most data recovery features.
3: Please see 2)
4. Of course, you can read/write firmware modules as well as EEPROM and NVRAM:
http://atola.com/products/insight/firmware-recoveryLoaders can also be created and used.
5: Please see 2)
6: Please see 2)