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 Post subject: Re: "Recovering and restoring" with HDD Regenerator
PostPosted: June 6th, 2014, 14:43 
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I'm wondering whether the "[hardware independent] algorithm which is used to repair damaged disk surfaces" is actually just an implementation of the ATA 28-bit Read Long or 48-bit SCT Read Long commands. AIUI, these commands have now been retired from the ATA standard, but perhaps the WD3201ABYS supports at least one of them. If so, could they have a firmware bug???

If you wish to continue testing, there are two ATA commands that allow you to flag a sector as "uncorrectable", namely WRITE UNCORRECTABLE EXT and WRITE UNCORRECTABLE.

FWIW, I notice that there are two commands, WRITE BUFFER and READ BUFFER, that access the drive's cache RAM. However, the READ BUFFER command must be preceded by a WRITE BUFFER, so it appears that this command is intended for testing the RAM with the user's own test data, not for retrieving its existing contents. A READ BUFFER command on its own retrieves indeterminate data.

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 Post subject: Re: "Recovering and restoring" with HDD Regenerator
PostPosted: June 6th, 2014, 16:07 
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Thanks for your tips! As I said, the drive is no longer with me.

I would not say that hdd has obsoleted ATA commands and/or FW bug. The problem is the $99.99 tool!


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 Post subject: Re: "Recovering and restoring" with HDD Regenerator
PostPosted: June 6th, 2014, 16:20 
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I have a 500GB Seagate 2.5" drive with some UNC errors very early on. I setup SpinRite to only work on the first .05% of the drive this morning right after I made my post. Many hours later and it is still going and I have no idea where it is at or what it is doing. I'll let it run over the weekend and see where we are at on Monday.

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 Post subject: Re: "Recovering and restoring" with HDD Regenerator
PostPosted: June 6th, 2014, 16:25 
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http://www.dposoft.net/hdd.html

Quote:
Ability to repair bad sectors (magnetic errors) on a hard disk surface using Hysteresis loops generator.*

*This recovery technology is originally developed by Dmitriy Primochenko

For an explanation of "Hysteresis", we are sent to this page ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteresis

... which, of course, explains nothing.

At least Steve Gibson explains what SpinRite does, or tries to do.

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 Post subject: Re: "Recovering and restoring" with HDD Regenerator
PostPosted: June 7th, 2014, 4:38 
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fzabkar wrote:
For an explanation of "Hysteresis", we are sent to this page ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteresis
... which, of course, explains nothing.

On the contrary! It explains everything about hysteresis but, YES, nothing about "Hysteresis loops generator" recovery technology originally developed by Dmitriy Primochenko!

That original recovery tehnology works wrong and make damage to users data!

It's really something original! More original can not be!


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 Post subject: Re: "Recovering and restoring" with HDD Regenerator
PostPosted: June 7th, 2014, 5:01 
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. .


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 Post subject: Re: "Recovering and restoring" with HDD Regenerator
PostPosted: June 7th, 2014, 13:35 
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I wrote to the author ...

Quote:
A user claims that HDD Regenerator "repaired" 3 bad sectors on his WD drive using bogus data that appears to have come from the drive's firmware area.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=28780

Therefore it seems to me that HDD Regenerator has the potential to corrupt user data.

... but ...

Quote:
Because of large amount of emails to our support service, our support service works with customers with active order numbers only.

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 Post subject: Re: "Recovering and restoring" with HDD Regenerator
PostPosted: June 8th, 2014, 4:40 
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FWIW, here is an analysis of "HDD Regenerator 1.41 FULL" at the ATA register level using an IDE port "grabber":

http://nazyura.hardw.net/Part01.htm

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 Post subject: Re: "Recovering and restoring" with HDD Regenerator
PostPosted: June 12th, 2014, 22:46 
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I agree with what was said in reply viewtopic.php?t=28780&f=1&start=0#p198417

Allow me to give you a layperson's perspective and take on the question of whether HDD Regenerator, SpinRite, or DRevitalize work as advertised. They do not.

They may re-write a defective sector, but with what data? From where? Derived how? Interpolated how? Who the **** knows.. They cannot pull data out of thin air.



To the end user they just fill in the blanks with either random bits or 0 bits. And the HDD and firmware are happy again. And so is the user, because he/she can now read the file with no CRC errors or likewise. The drive doesn't "hang" anymore and life goes on!

Understand that in a huge .BMP file or .MPG or .MP3 file this acceptable. When you playback or view a file that is occupying a "repaired" sector you might see one single pixel shaded incorrectly. You might hear an almost-inaudible pop or squeak in the case of the audio file. Or you might see temporary line or glitch or blip-of-static in a single frame of a 2-hour movie.

Now imagine that our file is spread over a bad sector again, just like before, except that this time our file is a flight plan for a spacecraft. Now we're in big trouble! 1 single bit out of place and you're likely to have a billion dollar mistake. The craft may fire its mid-course correction engine for 1 second instead of 10. A mis-placed decimal point! Ouch.



The general non-techie needs to be aware that when these programs are used they have to be used in read-only scan mode first. Then you make a list of sectors that are bad. Then you need to find out what files are using those sectors.

Run the repair in manual mode to ensure only those sectors will be re-written. And voila! Now files using the previously-bad sectors are readable again! Now you examine and compare the contents of those files. 100% of time they'll not pass a hash/comparison against a backup copy.

So what good is it?

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 Post subject: Re: "Recovering and restoring" with HDD Regenerator
PostPosted: June 13th, 2014, 10:12 
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I just found a drive that is a perfect candidate for my test...my in-law's hard drive. I mirrored the drive with DDI and it initially had 2 unread sectors after completion. I was able to get that down to a single unread sector. So, now I'm running the default fast scan and sector repair with SpinRite.

Thus far, it has been running for an hour, says it was running for 2 minutes and has 3 minutes left to go. It is stuck at a sector that is several hundred before the on unread sector and I have no idea what it is doing. Once complete, if it ever does complete, I will compare the "repaired" sectors to the cloned sectors.

I'm not sure why anyone would ever want to go through this process. It took about 2 hours to get a full clone of the drive, less 1 sector. It would appear that it is going to take much longer than that to "repair" the drive. If I didn't have the clone, how could I ever know how many bad sectors there are? What happens if it runs for a week, gets to 99% than the drive crashes?

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 Post subject: Re: "Recovering and restoring" with HDD Regenerator
PostPosted: June 13th, 2014, 10:13 
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fzabkar wrote:
I wrote to the author ...

Quote:
A user claims that HDD Regenerator "repaired" 3 bad sectors on his WD drive using bogus data that appears to have come from the drive's firmware area.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=28780

Therefore it seems to me that HDD Regenerator has the potential to corrupt user data.

... but ...

Quote:
Because of large amount of emails to our support service, our support service works with customers with active order numbers only.

Buy the program, ask the question, then ask for a refund because it is snake oil.

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 Post subject: Re: "Recovering and restoring" with HDD Regenerator
PostPosted: June 13th, 2014, 11:13 
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Now it is saying time elapsed is 1 minute and 3 hours and 24 minutes remaining. But, it is now moving again, though I'm not sure if it has done anything, as of yet.

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 Post subject: Re: "Recovering and restoring" with HDD Regenerator
PostPosted: June 13th, 2014, 12:33 
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My direct experience is that when one of these programs is able to "re-write" a sector, it does so within seconds, not hours.

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 Post subject: Re: "Recovering and restoring" with HDD Regenerator
PostPosted: June 13th, 2014, 15:32 
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I decided to post my findings to my company blog to make it easier to repost.
SpinRite – A Data Recovery Program?
Although I was only working with a single sector, it seems clear that this program did not "recover" any data, but did a better job of losing all the data in that sector forever.

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 Post subject: Re: "Recovering and restoring" with HDD Regenerator
PostPosted: June 13th, 2014, 15:52 
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lcoughey wrote:
I decided to post my findings to my company blog to make it easier to repost.
SpinRite – A Data Recovery Program?
Although I was only working with a single sector, it seems clear that this program did not "recover" any data, but did a better job of losing all the data in that sector forever.

Nice. Thanks.

BTW, would it be possible to see how SpinRite handles a "pseudo-bad" sector, ie one that has been created using the ATA WRITE UNCORRECTABLE EXT or WRITE UNCORRECTABLE commands? It would also be interesting to see how DeepSpar handles such a sector.

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 Post subject: Re: "Recovering and restoring" with HDD Regenerator
PostPosted: September 24th, 2014, 17:35 
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SpinRite, HDD Regen, DRevitalize, they cannot restore or get-back information from damaged sectors. They fix a disk by selectively reformatting faulty sectors or prodding the firmware to re-map. These faulty sectors which would otherwise cause the disk's firmware to return an error code and dialog box on your OS are now "restored to normal".

Make no mistake. The data in those repaired, reformatted, re-mapped sectors is not the original data that was there prior to (the sector) becoming damaged.

These faulty sectors could be caused by an inopportune power failure or physical defect. In the case of the power failure while writing, the data is already lost forever. And these programs will zero-out that sector for you.

But whatever file has ownership of that sector is now corrupt. Might as well delete the file. And that is the extent of the capability of these programs.

The sad part is people think the file that was causing the problem is now good. In the case of a video or mp3 it might be alright with a corrupted frame or bit of audio static. In the case of a spreadsheet, jpg, compressed zip file, executable, forget it. The file may read from the disk again, but the content isn't valid anymore.

Additional long-winded hot-air stuff:
I think that SpinRite (and HDD Regen and Drevitalize) were relevant years ago - in the days of the linear actuator. I'm talking disks from the early-mid 1980's. They solved real problems related to alignment and magnetic field strengths. Temperature expansions, non-circular tracks, and all that the modern day voice coil actuator is able to compensate for, but the linear actuator not. Hence these programs don't really apply to today's disks; except for selectively re-formatting, re-mapping a single sector. And fixing a logical failure at that point of repair. I.e. making sure the sector's checksum agrees with its contents.

The fact that Spinrite (and others) are on the market means that the authors are still trying to milk them for profits. And people, when encountering data loss, are looking for a convenient magical solution.


This is my take on the claims. And it is an exercise in tedious wording. My commentary is in bold.

- No data losses in any mode
No data losses in any mode for any data that is perfectly readable by the filesystem or the drive already. This means that perfectly healthy sectors and data and files are pretty much left alone. Sounds true, and it is! These programs don't go randomly deleting data or destroying files. These programs don't lose data that hasn't already been previously lost. So therefore no data losses.

- Corrupted data recovery (making unreadable data readable)
This means that it "repairs" or "re-formats" sectors. This is true. These programs make a bad sector right again. A file that had a bad sector typically hangs-up the firmware causing it to error out. And a file is now un-readable. We all know this. With a selectively re-formatted or "zeroed" sector, the file is now readable again. Data has been recovered! It is readable again! But you have a corrupt file with some zeros or other arbitrarily chosen data inserted.

- Working with any operating system without losses of any data.
Well yes, it doesn't lose anything by and in and of itself. But data that is already gone is gone. It ain't coming back! So therefore it doesn't lose anything.

- The HDD Regenerator can repair damaged hard disks without affecting or changing existing data. As a result, previously unreadable and inaccessible information is restored.
Again, absolutely true while remaining vague. If the program, just scans the disk looking for "bad" sectors, and it does that, it doesn't really affect those sectors. Makes sense. And it's true. It doesn't cause loss of data there. But if a file has a bad sector that bad sector has "no-longer-existing-data". Therefore the existing data isn't changed. The previously lost data doesn't apply to this point. It's already gone and not considered existing.

- Almost 60% of all hard drives damaged with bad sectors have an incorrectly magnetized disk surface. We have developed an algorithm which is used to repair damaged disk surfaces. This technology is hardware independent, it supports many types of hard drives and repairs damage that even low-level disk formatting cannot repair. As a result, previously unreadable information will be restored. Because of the way the repair is made, the existing information on the disk drive will not be affected!
They emphasize not damaging existing data. And that part is true. They lie by omission. They do not state whether or not the contents of a damaged sector is restored to it's "pre-damaged" state. It cannot.

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 Post subject: Re: "Recovering and restoring" with HDD Regenerator
PostPosted: September 24th, 2014, 18:06 
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I completely support the assessment at -- http://www.recoveryforce.com/spinrite-a ... y-program/

Furthermore in addition to all that, I'm beginning to doubt even the maintenance aspect of the program. Here is my case against it. Let us assume that I have a 500GB disk that has been sitting around for some time. And I want to refresh its contents. You know, make the magnetic fields on the platters all nice and spiffy, spit-polished, standing straight up at attention like in the army.. You know, just make sure the data is safe and secure.

Would you rather:

A- Use SpinRite, DRevitalize, or HDD Regenerator to re-write data and trust it to make its own interpretation if it comes across a weak or questionable sector? Keep in mind this program would not tell you what file it was having trouble with. It would blindly re-write the sector according to its own interpretation or fill it with arbitrary data. The questionable sector(s) could belong to any file. How do you know?

B- Use a standard filesync type of program or simple copy/paste operation? If a read error is encountered, you clearly know what file is faulty. And you know positively that it needs to be examined and validated.

B is the correct and safest way to refresh files. Files are read and actually transferred into main memory, checksums checked, and files are re-written. If any file is bad you know it right away. THEN, and only then can you take other actions like restoring that file from backup, repairing, replacing, or validating it.

Otherwise you just never know.

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 Post subject: Re: "Recovering and restoring" with HDD Regenerator
PostPosted: December 20th, 2020, 21:37 
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HDDOracle's Fzakbar has a long and very thorough thread titled: Deconstructing Spinrite.
You might give it a read before engaging Spinrite. I used it years ago on older technology hard-drives.
Mr Fzakbar does not recommend using Spinrite on current technology hard-drives.

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 Post subject: Re: "Recovering and restoring" with HDD Regenerator
PostPosted: December 21st, 2020, 10:24 
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Yay! Let's revive all 6 year old threads!

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 Post subject: Re: "Recovering and restoring" with HDD Regenerator
PostPosted: December 24th, 2020, 8:07 
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Arch, you are so right! I failed to notice the thread date! Maybe we can ask the mods to remove my comment.

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