MHDD help?

[bilbous]

Quick background

2.5" SATA HDD Fujitsu 120gb originally from xbox 360

Followed a guide which included using MHDD and the NHPA command. When done was told to remove power to drive for 10seconds then reinsert.

After that nothing is working.

Status now

Drive does not report in BIOS

In MHDD it sees something and it is labelled 0

In main screen at the top ERR is in red and DRSC and DRDY are in blue.

If i try NHPA i get
Read NHPA
FAILED
Done

RHPA
Device not ready
fail.
done (RHPA)

INIT
Init Drive: [RECAL]
RECAL FAIL


Pretty sure the drive is dead but thought i would ask in case there is a way of reviving it.

[Vulcan]

Followed a guide which included using MHDD and the NHPA command.

Please supply a link to the procedure which you followed, and explain any places where what you did was different from the procedure at that link (if at all).

[bilbous]

http://www.xboxhacker.net/index.php?topic=12062.0

Went well till step 37

[bilbous]

Added reply but link is waiting for approval.

[Vulcan]

OK, thanks. While we're waiting for that reply & link to appear, what exactly are the drive make / model / firmware version being reported by MHDD - and is the "0" that you mentioned actually the drive capacity being reported by MHDD or something else?

[bilbous]

It is not reporting the drive/make/model I press SHift + F3 and it shows under PCI controllers and the only identifier is the number 0 in the string.

It is the drive though because if i unplug the drive power and run a command it just hangs till drive is plugged in.

[Vulcan]

It is not reporting the drive/make/model I press SHift + F3 and it shows under PCI controllers and the only identifier is the number 0 in the string.

It is the drive though because if i unplug the drive power and run a command it just hangs till drive is plugged in.

Based on this description (and without yet being able to see what procedure you followed, until the link is approved, due to you being a new poster), I agree that somehow you've killed the drive, so that the f/w is no longer initialising - the clue is probably in that procedure somewhere, especially if it included downloading f/w to the drive. Just removing an HPA (using the NHPA command in MHDD) would not cause the symptoms you are describing, if the drive was OK otherwise.

You could consider asking a reputable DR company whether they would be able to fix this, but obviously there would be some cost associated with that.

[drc]

My guess is he ran an Xbox 360 related utility intended for WD drives on his Fujitsu... I remember one other thread recently about this (I thought... can't seem to find it now)

[Vulcan]

Agreed drc, I was remembering your comments on the earlier thread - but I didn't want to "jump the gun" until we had the evidence about what procedure was actually used by the OP here...

Edited to add: Here's the link to that earlier thread, as you mentioned you were looking for it...:
toshiba-mk1246gsx-help-please-t20825.html

Last edited by Vulcan on November 3rd, 2011, 12:58, edited 1 time in total.

[bilbous]

Not fussed about the drive just wondered if there was any hope for it
Certainly not worth sending off as they are peanuts now anyway.

[drc]

Ah, so the other one was for a Toshiba.

At any rate a utility sending vendor commands shouldn't be able to cause problems on other manufacturers' drives, as the commands will be different. So that is puzzling.

[bilbous]

The hddss.bin used was for a fujitsu drive as well.

[Vulcan]

http://www.xboxhacker.net/index.php?topic=12062.0

Went well till step 37

The link has been approved & appeared (above), thanks.

I can't see anything there, which could obviously lead to drive misbehaviour like you are describing

The drive must have been responding normally after the reboot at step 23, for you to be able to use MHDD at that point, and running the NHPA command should not cause a working drive to no longer be recognisible by MHDD (nor by the BIOS)

While I've got a guess about what may have happened (related to the hard power-cycle shown in that procedure), I hope another member has actual experience of this situation and can give more advice.

Good luck!

[bilbous]

It was not knocked about or anything. I had the drive secured in a bay to prevent that. In case that was what you were hinting at, I would think the same thing myself to be honest.

[Vulcan]

No, I wasn't hinting at anything physical or anything that was your fault - just a guess based on my experience of problems after "surprise power loss" (which, from the drive's point of view, is what that procedure includes, unfortunately).

[fzabkar]

Curiosity got the better of me, so I did some research on the subject.

The following article is my attempt to understand the method by which HddHackr modifies a WD drive in order to make it compatible with an Xbox 360.

http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/Hd ... _works.txt

[fzabkar]

Here is a HTML version.

HddHackr — how it works to modify a drive for use in an Xbox 360:
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/Hd ... lysis.html

[xsoliman]

Nice article fzabkar.
I havent had chance to pull apart the HddHackr utility to see how it accesse the WD reserved areas
Presumably it uses the standard WD MARV_super_on techniques ?

[fzabkar]

As you are aware, I'm not a data recovery professional, so my understanding is limited. The only time I have encountered the term "super_on" is in a Salvation Data article. Unless it is a super_secret, one of your colleagues should be able to advise you.

That said, I expect that the modules would be retrieved via the SMART command transport (SCT) using Vendor Specific Commands (VSC). There would be a preceding VSC Enable command, after which the Read Module commands would be tunneled through to the drive disguised as SMART log data using ATA standard SMART read/write log commands.

You can see an explanation of the SCT VSC mechanism here:
http://idle3-tools.sourceforge.net/

... and here are several MHDD scripts:
http://yura.projektas.lt/files/wd/mhdd/index.html

The script entitled "WD Marvell Royl SA ROM copy read" would be the pertinent one.

Data for Read MOD 02 command:
0x0000 08 00 01 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

Data for Read MOD 0D command:
0x0000 08 00 01 00 0D 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

[xsoliman]

Thanks

The idle3 documenation shows the "VSC Enable" aka super-on for the WD Green drives ..