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 Post subject: Seagate Slim USB drives with INIC-3609 bridge
PostPosted: July 11th, 2021, 2:38 
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I have around 50 Seagate Slim USB 3.0 drives. The ones with Initio INIC-3609 bridges for SATA-USB are all unreliable with occasional "silent" corruption (no pop-up in Windows, just an Event Log entry), Delayed Write Failed pop-ups, and momentary disconnects. The drives with other bridges all work fine.

The problem is not cables, soldering, voltage/PSU, or anything else like that. I test the drives (read+write+verify all sectors), put them into service, and they start to malfunction within a few days of use (several threads updating log files every 30-60s). Same behaviour on three different PCs. The drives work flawlessly after the Initio bridge is replaced with an ASMedia or JMicron bridge.

Seagate claims there are no firmware updates. I'm interested in trying the INIC-3609 v5.08 firmware from usbdev.ru to see if these drives can be fixed without having to do a bridge swap. The FW update tool is included with an official update for a FANTEC enclosure here:
https://www.fantec.de/support-downloads/downloadsuche/
Enter the model "ER-U3", select "ER-U3 Docking Station", and press the search button.

The two tools "Config.exe" and "MTPwin2.exe" both scan for a compatible device, but find nothing. "iCommon.dll" seems to be hardcoded with PIDs 3910, 3940, and 3980 along with "INIC-3609" for the device name. I tried changing the three instances of "INIC-3609" to "BUP Slim SL" (for a silver Backup Plus Slim) and all of the PIDs to AB24 (VID:PID is 0BC2:AB24 for Backup Plus Slims), but the scans still fail.

If anybody knows how to get the Initio FW update software to work that would be great.

Thanks!


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Slim USB drives with INIC-3609 bridge
PostPosted: July 12th, 2021, 14:59 
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If you invalidate the EEPROM (by shorting an appropriate pin to ground?), does the bridge revert to its generic factory code? It should identify itself as an INIC-3609 rather than a Seagate device.

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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Slim USB drives with INIC-3609 bridge
PostPosted: July 12th, 2021, 15:49 
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fzabkar wrote:
If you invalidate the EEPROM (by shorting an appropriate pin to ground?), does the bridge revert to its generic factory code? It should identify itself as an INIC-3609 rather than a Seagate device.

Thank you very much for the suggestion. While I've read that doing that is possible I haven't tried it yet. The goal is to be able to "fix" drives with INIC-3609 bridges without having to pry apart the enclosures (which don't always snap together cleanly after disassembly, and I could just swap the bridge boards once they're open anyway).

I made a couple more changes in a hex editor (replacing a suspected location of the VID with the Seagate value and reverting the string to "INIC-3609" in case the bridge always returns its real name to commands from the flashing software) but no combination has worked yet.

I'm also exploring the possibility that the problem is UASP-related. A number of early controllers and bridges, especially with early firmware, are known to have unreliable UASP support. While I haven't seen it specifically mentioned, the INIC-3609 may be one of those chips.

The three USB 3.0 controller cards all have Renesas uPD720201 chips. Each card is from a different controller card manufacturer. The three computers used for testing are all using the Renesas 3.23.0 driver, although they all have different Windows versions (7 64-bit, 2003 64-bit, and XP 32-bit). Renesas claimed in press releases in 2011 and 2013 that their driver supports UASP in XP, Vista, and 7 via driver code from Media Logic. INIC-3609 also supports UASP, so I am assuming UASP is active. I would like to try disabling UASP (revert to BOT mode) on either the bridge or the driver. I've contacted Initio, but they haven't updated their site in a couple of years and may be defunct. I'm waiting to hear back from Renesas as well.

I'm aware that in Widows 8/8.1/10 using the generic built-in driver and replacing uaspstor.sys with usbstor.sys is an effective means of disabling UASP on the Renesas controller, but since the PCs using the Seagate USB drives can't currently be upgraded to 8/8.1/10 it doesn't matter if that solution would work. Also, Microsoft may break the ability of that solution to work at any time in a future security or feature update, so it can't be considered a long-term solution.

Any additional help or suggestions would be welcome!


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Slim USB drives with INIC-3609 bridge
PostPosted: July 12th, 2021, 17:53 
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FYI, the following document contains a reference circuit for the INIC-3607 (page 10). It appears to be pin compatible with the INIC-3609 (according to the evaluation board on page 13).

http://www.semisolution.com/fsbClient/__ezbdownload.jsp?bm_seq=14168&ba_seq=15&order=3&fname=USB3+0_initio.pdf

The bridge IC contains 32K ROM, so I would think that this generic code would take precedence over the external vendor specific code/data if the EEPROM were absent. You could short the EEPROM's /HOLD pin to ground while you power up the bridge, then release the short. Just make sure that the /HOLD pin is not hardwired to Vcc.

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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Slim USB drives with INIC-3609 bridge
PostPosted: July 12th, 2021, 22:53 
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This is the device ID section of the Fantec firmware payload file (YuanJi_3609_3940_fw_v313.bin):

Code:
Offset(h) 00   02   04   06   08   0A   0C   0E

0000F000  25C9 3609 3940 0000 0000 0000 0000 1000  %É6.9@..........
0000F010  0000 0000 0000 0008 5975 616E 4A69 2020  ........YuanJi 
0000F020  2020 2020 2020 2020 0000 0000 0078 0310          .....x..
0000F030  494E 4943 2D33 3630 3920 2020 2020 2020  INIC-3609       
0000F040  2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 0000                ..
0000F050  FF7F FF7F 0001 C001 13FD 3940 3030 3030  ÿ.ÿ...À..ý9@0000
                              ^^^^ ^^^^
                       Initio VID / PID (INIC-3609)

0000F060  3030 3030 3030 3030 3030 3030 3030 3030  0000000000000000
0000F070  0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000  ................
........
0000FFF0  FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF 31B3 3E18  ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ1³>.
                             checksum ? ^^^^^^^^^

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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Slim USB drives with INIC-3609 bridge
PostPosted: July 12th, 2021, 23:15 
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I also found this in the Fantec payload file:

Code:
Offset(h) 00   02   04   06   08   0A   0C   0E

00007C20  25C9 3609 3940 0020 3700 0000 0000 0000  %É6.9@. 7.......
00007C30  0152 6F63 6B00 0008 5975 616E 4A69 2020  .Rock...YuanJi 
00007C40  2020 2020 2020 2020 0003 1300 0000 0308          ........
00007C50  494E 4943 2D33 3630 3920 2020 2020 2020  INIC-3609       
00007C60  2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 0000                ..
00007C70  FF7F FF7F 0070 80FA 0BC2 2310 2020 2020  ÿ.ÿ..p€ú.Â#.   
                              ^^^^ ^^^^
                       Seagate VID/PID

00007C80  2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 0000 0000              ....
00007C90  0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000  ................

That's the VID/PID for a Seagate product, maybe an Expansion model (0x231B is an Expansion).

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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Slim USB drives with INIC-3609 bridge
PostPosted: July 13th, 2021, 0:01 
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Joined: July 11th, 2021, 1:37
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fzabkar wrote:
I also found this in the Fantec payload file:
That's the VID/PID for a Seagate product, maybe an Expansion model (0x231B is an Expansion).

That's an interesting find, thank you very much for sharing it. I hadn't examined the payloads at all yet since the compatible device scanning process doesn't require a payload. Those VID/PID addresses may be useful later if I can get device detection to work.

I've heard back from Renesas. Unfortunately they're not going to help with anything driver or firmware-related citing a lack of support resources.


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Slim USB drives with INIC-3609 bridge
PostPosted: August 10th, 2021, 6:47 
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Joined: July 11th, 2021, 1:37
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Minor update. I received a response from Initio a few weeks ago and they asked for additional information on this problem. I provided details to them, but haven't heard from them again.

Also, I did extended (two weeks) testing of a drive that has problems via the INIC-3609 in USB 3.0 mode, but it's perfectly stable in USB 2.0 mode. Whether it's UASP, USB 3.0 in general, or something else that's causing the problem is still unclear.

I'll write to Initio again soon if I don't hear back from them.


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Slim USB drives with INIC-3609 bridge
PostPosted: May 25th, 2022, 7:15 
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Joined: May 25th, 2022, 7:11
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Location: guangxi
Is there a solution to the problem of 3609


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 Post subject: Re: Seagate Slim USB drives with INIC-3609 bridge
PostPosted: January 31st, 2024, 15:15 
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Joined: January 26th, 2023, 17:53
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Location: Italy / Egypt
If anyone has Seagate Backup+ with ASMEDIA bridge, could you please issue this command and give me the output?

sg_raw -r 128 $dev e0 00 00 00 00 00

where $dev is the device you get from sg_scan

Thanks.

Edit: I realize now this is the wrong thread.
Sorry.


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