Troublesome Memory Stick

[Lardman]

FC1179
0x89C40832 A6000000
PC3000 Flash 9. All up to date.

Chip IDs and reads with default voltage & timings data present although not a lot but no ECC found.

Does anyone have any words of wisdom (other than buy VNR) ?

[arvika]

FC controllers mostly are refurbished. So you can meet everything Here could be bad bits or sector size which is not supported by PC3K so far.

[Lardman]

I would have thought TS would have identified that though? I'm going to have to buy VNR to work on anything modern aren't I.

[pepe]

not everything is supported in VNR either... like for SSS6623 (but probably other SSS/toshiba too) i had to use FE (as per Arvika's recommendation) which gave best result for this controller. It found most of the blocks automatically, had to map a few of them manually.
Dunno about VNR's most recent sw, but the one i have from 2022 cannot (or idk how) build an image based on FS data.

pepe

[Sasha Sheremetov]

FC1179
Does anyone have any words of wisdom (other than buy VNR) ?

If you'd ask my completely unbiased opinion - I say just buy it.

[Lardman]

I'd love to be able to justify all three but I just don't get that sort of volume of cases in. So far this year I'm looking at just over 60% unrecoverables on PC3K flash, LDPC is a large part of that but I don't like the direction it's heading.

[Lardman]

If you'd ask my completely unbiased opinion - I say just buy it.

There's a surprise. That 60% would have to drop to below 40% for me to justify it, at the moment I'm not sure it would.

[pepe]

Dunno how others are with this, but neither of my flash tools justify their values nowadays... Flash jobs are part of the portfolio, so i do it, but too few cases, even less really good, recoverable ones are since the era of TLC... Well, the last cases were pretty much ok as for nand, nice dumps, but sometimes nand is really weak

[Lardman]

Im much the same - I offer it as a service because it's expected but if I can't deliver on 6/10 cases it's just a waste.

[posidon]

I have just visited Arvikas's flash killer website as well as other sites of Lardman , sasha & pepe
Its amazing how dedicated efforts & hardwork you have put for complex subject like Nand going beyond any tools .
Appreciate all of you. Poland and Ukrain besides russia are in forefront in reverse engineering .
Data recovery business is going through great transition with newer drives getting very difficult to recover for smaller guys.
Can you pls. suggest any entry level tool ( not involving xor /ecc & other complex manual work) for diagnostics & identification of partially damaged SSD's ?
I have PC3K udma so I can add Flash but it is restricted to SATA only .
I have tried all available tools like chip genius etc but I want something paid software having basic recovery capabilities as well (nand specific )
Thank you

[Lardman]

Can you pls. suggest any entry level tool ( not involving xor /ecc & other complex manual work) for diagnostics & identification of partially damaged SSD's ?

Even entry level tools aren't cheap. If you want to work at a firmware level with nvme you're going to have to pay the premium, I have searched for alternatives myself but it can not be avoided. Take a good look at the drives you're getting in - what tools actually support them. Over here I mainly see EVOs and MX500s not supported by any commercial tools.

Personally I'd suggest you spend the time and money on understanding the electronics involved with each drive and I don't just mean waving a thermal camera at them. I mean buy some donors and take them apart chip by chip to understand how and why they work. If you pair that knowledge with the SSD addon for udma you should be able to generate enough recovering SATA ssd's to buy PC3K portable because that's what your competition will be using.

[posidon]

Can you pls. suggest any entry level tool ( not involving xor /ecc & other complex manual work) for diagnostics & identification of partially damaged SSD's ?

Even entry level tools aren't cheap. If you want to work at a firmware level with nvme you're going to have to pay the premium, I have searched for alternatives myself but it can not be avoided. Take a good look at the drives you're getting in - what tools actually support them. Over here I mainly see EVOs and MX500s not supported by any commercial tools.

Personally I'd suggest you spend the time and money on understanding the electronics involved with each drive and I don't just mean waving a thermal camera at them. I mean buy some donors and take them apart chip by chip to understand how and why they work. If you pair that knowledge with the SSD addon for udma you should be able to generate enough recovering SATA ssd's to buy PC3K portable because that's what your competition will be using.

Thanks Lardman for your words of wisdom
Yes there is no point in going for portable for obviously its cost & I will not be able to use its potential as well.Besides I outsource my cases to a friend having portable but nearly 90% cases are returned for mcu not supported or too complex & not getting recovered reasons.
As you have suggested I will have to improve on electronics as I am very poor in them as well.
While upgrading TS I will opt for SSD addon so that at least I can learn and recover simple sata cases.
I get samsung 870EVO & MX500 more and so far none of them is recovered besides any chinese SSD's.
Overall success with SSD's is merely 10%.

[csava]

Using a combination of PC3000 FLASH and FE can solve most cases involving FC1178/1179/2279 controllers, including file system reconstruction. The current limitation of PC3000 FLASH is the lack of support for dynamic XOR in FC controllers. Otherwise, I could complete the vast majority of cases using only this tool.

[Lardman]

Im not sure if this is dynamic XOR, ( I think it was 3325? without checking) Appeared to work and a raw scan after shows 40+ files and the presence of a fat file system.

From Ace TS...

I received answers from devs in this case.
Unfortunately it looks like it is impossible to proceed with this case because we don't have ECC here.
I tried to find it with all possible options that we have, but still nothing.
FC cases are the real pain and we have a rule that if there is no ECC we are not able to continue.

Appears to me they just can't be bothered - I know ECC autodetect doesn't work which is why I open the support ticket. All support did was try autodetect and autotected with ReadRetry .

Can I use FE without the hardware ? is it possible to buy the software license and import the dump from pc3K.

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Well,
Stop thinking VNR is something killer , VNR does not have any sort of translation tables and hence cannot mafe FS were SA does not have Heads , LBN etc . A Combination of All Tools is the best thing ,You should have even FE ,If i was the FE Developer i would still make Hardware ,So the only option is chinese Hardware For FE ,I only have VNR and PC 3000 Flash

[Lardman]

Stop thinking VNR is something killer , VNR does not have any sort of translation tables and hence cannot mafe FS were SA does not have Heads , LBN etc .

I don't think it's a panacea but I get the distinct impression Ace couldn't care less about flash work anymore. It was great when it worked but recently nothing I get in is supported and TS aren't exactly enthusiastic about helping or working outside of the box. I can worry about getting a FS when I have read the chip and found ECC and XOR, all of which flash has failed at lately.

[arvika]

Quick check this case. ECC algorithm is not the problem for this case. No bad bits. Recovery possible. Just need little correction and assembly. I send PM.

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Stop thinking VNR is something killer , VNR does not have any sort of translation tables and hence cannot mafe FS were SA does not have Heads , LBN etc .

I don't think it's a panacea but I get the distinct impression Ace couldn't care less about flash work anymore. It was great when it worked but recently nothing I get in is supported and TS aren't exactly enthusiastic about helping or working outside of the box. I can worry about getting a FS when I have read the chip and found ECC and XOR, all of which flash has failed at lately.

Sorry ,
There were some typing errors i wanted to say headers not heads and i wanted to say make File System ,Thank arvika he has done great work with FC controllers he can sortout your problem 100%

[Lardman]

Thank arvika he has done great work with FC controllers he can sortout your problem 100%

He has and very quickly, I've informed the client.
The problem is I shouldn't have to resort to community support because Ace tech support can't be bothered when the case isn't just a solbase solution. I might as well save the annual TS costs to cover the cost of cases that need to be subcontracted out.

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Thank arvika he has done great work with FC controllers he can sortout your problem 100%

He has and very quickly, I've informed the client.
The problem is I shouldn't have to resort to community support because Ace tech support can't be bothered when the case isn't just a solbase solution. I might as well save the annual TS costs to cover the cost of cases that need to be subcontracted out.

Well,
No its not like this ,If they get something new they will work on that if its more widely used otherwise absolutely no .