Seagate ST31000520AS F/WCC32

[HaQue]

Hi,
I have a drive here that I want to take an initial look at.

Using a USB-SATA adapter, drive is detected correct model in win, but says "needs to be formatted"

Terminal Output is:

Code:

Rst 0x20M
(P) SATA Reset


can cntrl+Z and get F3 T> prompt.

The drive sounds fairly normal, no beeping, no scratching/screeching, and fairly normal bootup seeking sounds.

What commands can I use to get an idea of possible problems?

cheers

[fzabkar]

Are you certain that the problem isn't logical rather than physical?

Can you read the contents of sector 0 with a disc editor?

[HaQue]

Hi, Very good point. Should know better than to assume.. in fact:

-Disk management doesn't see it
-I can use HxD to open the disk and view sectors
-Device manager detects it with correct model, though populating the Volumes tab gives a capacity of 238473MB. I dont know how it is partitioned(if the partitions are intact)

[fzabkar]

That's a regular MBR and a partition table with a single NTFS partition.

80 20 21 00 07 FE FF FF 00 08 00 00 00 48 1C 1D

The NTFS volume begins at sector 2048 and has a size of 0x1D1C4800 sectors.

0x1D1C4800 x 512 = 250 057 064 448

0x1D1C4800 x 4096 = 2 000 456 515 584

What has happened is that you have removed a 2TB drive from an enclosure whose bridge firmware was configured with 4096 bytes per sector. By installing it inside a PC, or attaching it to a 512-bytes-per-sector bridge, you have exposed the drive's 512e sectors. This means that sector 0 will still be in the same place, so the partition table will still be accessible. However every other sector is now displaced by a factor of 8. This means that Windows cannot find the boot sector (2048) and therefore complains that the partition is not formatted.

In short, reinstall the drive inside its original enclosure and you should have access to your data. At the moment you have a 4KB file system attached to a 512B bridge. When the drive is inside the original enclosure, the OS will see a 4KB file system attached to a 4KB bridge.

[fzabkar]

I expect that your present configuration will have an NTFS boot sector at LBA 16384 (= 2048 x .

[HaQue]

Hi fzabkar, This is a disk I was asked to look at, and was provided very little details, apart from being a portable Hard drive..

It is a 1TB drive, so the label says.

I am asking for the enclosure to be sent to me and after that I will continue.

Thanks alot for your help and explanations.

[fzabkar]

Find the boot sector and that will tell us a lot more. If it isn't at LBA 16384, then it could be at LBA 8192. That would correspond to a sector size of 2KB.

[HaQue]

I will be travelling and have to put this on the backburner util tuesday, but so far, it look like the disk isnt a total write-off. many thanks fzabkar. I tell people that I dont do harddrives, and apparently if a USB connection is withing 10 feet, it is suddenly a "USB drive" and not a hard drive.

I wish I knew how to say that negative thingo, Ne.. Na.. Nu.. gah! cant do it!

[xsoliman]

And please let us know the name of the enclosure, for our info

I've seen an external Buffalo 3TB enclosure expose the 512e SATA drive in it as 4096 bytes per sector
but not seen any other yet

[HaQue]

No problems, I will post all the details.

[fzabkar]

IIRC, I've encountered a 3TB (?) drive that was configured with 1KB sectors. It was behind an AMD SATA RAID controller and was configured using AMD's RAIDXpert utility.

Apparently AMD circumvents the 32-LBA limitation for 2TiB+ drives by increasing the sector size to 1KB for drive capacitiess up to 4TiB, 2KB sectors for 8TiB, and 4KB for 16TiB.

RAIDXpert User Manual - AMD:
http://www2.ati.com/relnotes/amd_raidxp ... r_v2.1.pdf

[jignesh]

Hi,
I have a drive here that I want to take an initial look at.

Using a USB-SATA adapter, drive is detected correct model in win, but says "needs to be formatted"

Terminal Output is:

Code:

Rst 0x20M
(P) SATA Reset


can cntrl+Z and get F3 T> prompt.

The drive sounds fairly normal, no beeping, no scratching/screeching, and fairly normal bootup seeking sounds.

What commands can I use to get an idea of possible problems?

cheers

Dear Friend HaQue

I Seen Ur Terminal Log I Think Ur Drive is ok and data area and other thing also ok by terminal log in ur drive firmware problem or other problem not seen.
ur problem is logical and its very very easy to resolved friend if u like my help add me in ur skypee my skypee id is : smart.computech i will comes to ur tv and resolved ur issue.

yours friend
jignesh pankhania

[HaQue]

Thanks my Friend, I will wait for the enclosure, and more information from the owner. I usually take a VERY small look at conventional hard disks, and any indication of bad sounds, or any chance at all it requires a Pro, I will tell the owner and return it.

Usually that is actually the case and I had assumed the disk would be physical without going through the proper analysis

[HaQue]

Hmm, owner says the enclosure was fried, so they threw it away. Also cant remember what it was.
So I need to find one that supports 4kb sectors it seems

[fzabkar]

You need to determine the actual sector size. Locate the boot sector and show us its contents. One way would be to fire up DMDE and select Tools -> Search for Special Sector -> Boot Sector.

Data recovery software will still be able to access your data in its present state, so don't be too concerned if you can't find a compatible enclosure.

[HaQue]

Sucks trying to work at home and work on these private projects.

Ive spent a while trying to access the disk and I don't think I can with the Jmicron JM20337 USB-SATA cable I have, and laptop. Later JM's tech specs say they support 4k sectors, this one doesn't mention it. After the windows "you need to format" message the disk disappears from device manager.
DMDE just crashes or says it needs to be a local disk. Might have better luck on a newer PC at work with all the newest rapid storage drivers.

I spent a while installing Seagate tools, I already had a KB installed that alledgedly supports 4K better. and in fact the installed hard disk in this laptop is a physically 4k, Logical 512b drive. so looks like the stopper here is the USB Bridge.

[LarrySabo]

How about an eSATA PC Card and an eSATA dock instead of USB? I assume your laptop doesn't have an on-board eSATA port.

[HaQue]

How about an eSATA PC Card and an eSATA dock instead of USB? I assume your laptop doesn't have an on-board eSATA port.

No it doesn't unfortunately. I have 3 laptops here, none with eSATA. 1 of them has an Expresscard slot, but I have no cards.

Anyway it is 1am so Ill be at work soon enough with some newer PCs to connect it natively.
The only PCs I have here are 6 or 7 older ones for various stuff, mainly in various incarnations due to whatever purpose was last needed, serial terminals, debugging and the home one. Most else is done on laptops and VMs.

Thanks!

[HaQue]

I hooked the drive as an internal in a new PC.

After installing intel Rapid Storage(RST) drive was detected and is seen in DMDE and SeaTools, with correct capacity, but cant do anything with it.

I tried seagate bootable seatools, ran the tests and the test failed - said that the drive was not responding to commands.

DMDE gets I/O errors and can't do anything.

[xsoliman]

So you can get to the F3 t> prompt you said earlier

Does ctrl-R show any messages ?

Then ctrl-Z again

suggest run all the commands in my tutorial
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=27119

up to the Write section (don't do that)

as they will give us something to work on