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 Post subject: New Linux tool for sending drive commands - hddscripttool
PostPosted: February 22nd, 2015, 23:46 
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I would like to introduce hddscripttool, a new scriptable tool for Linux to send commands directly to a drive. It is intended to be a Linux version of MHDD. But unlike MHDD, all the commands are run from scripts. While that means that there is no user interface, it also means that you can modify or create custom commands to do whatever you want. Since it runs in Linux you are not limited to the DOS operating system. It is also capable of sending ATA commands to a USB connected drive, although understand that the commands are sent to the USB adapter and not directly to the drive (what the adapter does with the commands depends on the adapter). One limitation is that the drive must be recognized by BIOS so Linux can see it. I do not know how well MHDD can recognize a drive that will not normally show up in the BIOS, but that would be the one thing that hddscriptool cannot do.

While I may be known for my open source ddrutility software, hddscripttool is not open source and will be provided as both 32 and 64 bit executables (compiled on Ubuntu 14.04). The reason is that I am planning on having the ability to unlock an advanced version with a paid license key. The advanced version will be more like a mini programming language capable of conditional statements, loops, subroutines, and some other bells and whistles. It will offer an ability to have scripts that can make decisions and perform complex tasks (potential to fix certain specific drive issues automatically). As one might imagine, creating a mini programming language is no small task and takes a fair amount of time and effort. I am hoping to be able to get at least a small amount of monetary compensation for that.

The idea behind this was to offer a tool that could perform direct SCSI and ATA commands to a disk, but not be limited to specific tasks like most other software. It can perform simple script commands like MHDD to send commands to a disk, or it can perform more complex functions. I will provide some of the scripts to get started, but anyone will have the potential to create their own scripts, either for their own private use or to be shared. And there is documentation provided, unlike some tools. The documentation is not as complete as it could be at this time, but it is a work in progress.

At the time I am posting this, hddscripttool is considered to be a beta pre-release. It is a stripped down version of what I am planning to release in the future (all the advanced code has been removed until it is ready). Please try it out and see what you think. Even if it doesn’t do anything you need it to from the scripts that I provide, understand that because it is scripted it has the potential to do much more.

There is one script that may be of interest. Some drives have the ability to change the error recovery control read command timer. This timer controls how much time the drive will spend trying to recover bad data. By default (value of 0) a drive will try everything it can to recover the bad data, which is usually somewhere between 2-5 seconds. But if this is set low the drive can be told to give up trying the bad read after as little at 100ms (value of 1 on some drives, how a drive accepts and processes this value is drive specific). This means that on drives that support it, you can make it process error sectors much faster (possibly 20+ times faster). And the less time spent trying to read bad areas the better. There are two scripts, one to get the current error timer and display it, and one to set the error timer. The identify device script will show if error recovery control is supported or not. Note that even if it is supported, how a drive reacts to it is drive specific (it doesn’t seem to have any effect on some drives that support it).

At the time of this post, I am providing hddscripttool in a folder on Google Drive, the link will be in a separate post following this one. I am planning on having my own website up in the future for the advanced version, but until then this is the easiest way for me to share it. File checksums will be provided to ensure a proper download. As I am providing precompiled executables, I am very interested in any issues with running them on different distributions of Linux, and would appreciate any feedback involving such issues.

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 Post subject: Re: New Linux tool for sending drive commands - hddscripttoo
PostPosted: February 22nd, 2015, 23:49 
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Joined: January 29th, 2012, 1:43
Posts: 982
Location: United States
Here is the link to the google drive location for hddscripttool:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... sp=sharing

If the link should go bad, please follow this thread for more information.

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 Post subject: Re: New Linux tool for sending drive commands - hddscripttoo
PostPosted: October 13th, 2021, 1:38 
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Joined: January 24th, 2009, 23:53
Posts: 23
the google drive link is not working


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 Post subject: Re: New Linux tool for sending drive commands - hddscripttoo
PostPosted: October 13th, 2021, 3:21 
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Joined: July 12th, 2010, 4:38
Posts: 1418
Location: Portugal
kocoman wrote:
the google drive link is not working


The original post is from 2015....

Maybe better to check this:
https://www.data-medics.com/forum/new-l ... -t905.html

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