Software only cloning tool that can do soft resets?

[maximus]

Are there any software only cloning tools that can perform a software reset after a set time instead of waiting for the drive to finish with error each recovery attempt and report a bad sector/read?

A more specific example: software performs read command, after 250ms there is no success so a soft reset is done, then after reset the next read is attempted.

[Spildit]

HRT-DRE can do that, but it's not software only.



DDI4 (Deepspar Disk Imager), PC-3000 UDMA DE (Data Extractor), MRTLab tool DE component can do that as well, but it's hardware + software.

[fzabkar]

Just FYI ...

http://www.deepspar.com/pdf/DeepSparDis ... paper3.pdf

[Spildit]

This is interesting :

For simplicity, the ECC bytes can be thought of as achecksum to validate data integrity. Most current hard disk drives
are Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) compliant devices. The system software reads the drive sector-by-sector,
using the standard ATA read sector command. If a sector has a wrong ECC checksum, it returns no data, just an error,
despite the fact that most of the bytes in the sector are likely correct and all are actually readable, even if some of the
data is corrupt. The system software is unable to access data byte-by-byte, using other ATA read commands that read
data regardless of ECC status.

On our real/write long experiment when both of you damaged the sector with wrong ECC on write long you couldn't retrieve data from the sector with "Read" using the BIOS/MHDD Script, while i was using HRT PCI card and the "reading" using the dre would allow to see the data on the sector even with bad/wrong ECC.

[fzabkar]

This is interesting :

For simplicity, the ECC bytes can be thought of as achecksum to validate data integrity. Most current hard disk drives
are Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) compliant devices. The system software reads the drive sector-by-sector,
using the standard ATA read sector command. If a sector has a wrong ECC checksum, it returns no data, just an error,
despite the fact that most of the bytes in the sector are likely correct and all are actually readable, even if some of the
data is corrupt. The system software is unable to access data byte-by-byte, using other ATA read commands that read
data regardless of ECC status.

On our real/write long experiment when both of you damaged the sector with wrong ECC on write long you couldn't retrieve data from the sector with "Read" using the BIOS/MHDD Script, while i was using HRT PCI card and the "reading" using the dre would allow to see the data on the sector even with bad/wrong ECC.

Maybe DRE transparently uses READ LONG or some other means. In any case, the ATA standards committee have retired this command (and SCT READ LONG), stating that "recent changes in recording technology have made the idea of a host being able to actually force its own error correction/detection data to the device meaningless". I have also seen statements to the effect that, on modern drives, a good sector that is read using READ LONG or SCT READ LONG wil return scrambled, meaningless data. Perhaps you should experiment with these commands on a more recent drive.

ACS-2 Obsolete SCT Read and Write Long - T13 (February 19, 2009):
http://www.t13.org/documents/UploadedDo ... e_Long.pdf

[Spildit]

Well, at least on a Samsung HM321HI from 2010 read long works and retrieves good data (not scrambled).

[data-medics]

The best software option you have is ddrescue in linux. I'm not sure if it actually sends soft resets, but it manages to image on most drives without completely hanging on bad sectors. Nothing in Windows is capable of doing this, the OS prevents it unless you have hardware like a PC-3000 or MRT card which is directly controlled by the software instead of the OS.

[Spildit]

The best software option you have is ddrescue in linux. I'm not sure if it actually sends soft resets, but it manages to image on most drives without completely hanging on bad sectors. Nothing in Windows is capable of doing this, the OS prevents it unless you have hardware like a PC-3000 or MRT card which is directly controlled by the software instead of the OS.

ddrescue can't do soft-resets.

In fact the Original Poster - @maximus - of this thread is the author of ddrutility, a set of tools designed to work with ddrescue to aid with data recovery, and also have done some great explanations on ddrescue like this one :

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=172&t=1173

I think that the question posted on this forum have the aim to figure out if someone knows of any tool that is not hardware based (like PC-3000, MRTLab, SD, HRT, etc) as there is some "testing" in progress to determine if it would be feasable to code a tool that can do soft-resets and decrease the time needed to access a "bad sector" by soft-reseting instead of wainting for the sector to be declared "bad".

Regards.

[fzabkar]

The was some research done by "xsoliman" and "Enoch" that attempted to understand the ECC system on Seagate's F3 drives:

http://hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?t=713
http://hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=665

[Spildit]

This is INTERESTING.
I can do Read/Write long on a momentus 5400.6 F3 Arch drive.

[maximus]

The best software option you have is ddrescue in linux. I'm not sure if it actually sends soft resets, but it manages to image on most drives without completely hanging on bad sectors. Nothing in Windows is capable of doing this, the OS prevents it unless you have hardware like a PC-3000 or MRT card which is directly controlled by the software instead of the OS.

As stated by Spildit in a post above, ddrescue is very much unable to do what I ask. And I am VERY familiar with what ddrescue can do, as I have done some benchmarking tests with it and have had an influence on the latest releases in regards to the algorithm. Not to mention my passthrough patch for ddresuce.

If ddrescue is currently the best software option (and I do believe it is unless someone can state otherwise, which is why I am asking the question), then that would mean that there is not a software solution that can perform as I asked.

[Spildit]

Maybe HDDDup can do soft-reset but i'm not sure because i've never tested it properly.

[maximus]

This question is not about read long. If anyone wants to test how and if read long works, look up my ddrutility software, the utility ddru_diskutility can perform read long commands. It can even do an average of the reads. My hddscripttool can also perform read long commands. Both can do the newer SCT long sector access.

But long commands are obsolete (twice over). And my experience is that even when they do work they are not very productive. Until someone can produce real results that we can see, I don't consider read long as a usable option for accurate data recovery.

[Spildit]

This question is not about read long. If anyone wants to test how and if read long works, look up my ddrutility software, the utility ddru_diskutility can perform read long commands. It can even do an average of the reads. My hddscripttool can also perform read long commands. Both can do the newer SCT long sector access.

But long commands are obsolete (twice over). And my experience is that even when they do work they are not very productive. Until someone can produce real results that we can see, I don't consider read long as a usable option for accurate data recovery.

What about turning of ECC ?

[data-medics]

I would think it's theoretically possible to make software to do it, however I'd bet it would have to be a bootable custom build. In any OS there's going to be drivers already managing the drives which I'd tend to doubt allow software to send such direct commands to the drive. Possibly you could build a custom driver to plug into an existing OS such as Linux which would allow this, but you'd need someone with extensive knowledge of these drivers. This might be a better question to ask on a Linux development forum. The ATA commands themselves should be pretty straight forward if the driver allows direct commands to be given.

[guru]

What's the cheapest HW/SW imaging tool?

[data-medics]

That actually works, probably MRT..

[data-medics]

I don't know if it'll help, as I'm not a programmer and can't make much sense of the code. But here's some ATA scripting written for Linux which seems to include code to call a soft reset: http://gaztek.sourceforge.net/osdev/hardware/ata.c

Just search for the term "soft reset" in the code.

[guru]

An that thing. What's the best, is it Deepspar? Must admit I haven't looked at current market hardware for many years

[Spildit]

What's the cheapest HW/SW imaging tool?

Maybe HDD Duplicator with hardware, but MRTLabs tool (with Data Extractor) might be the best price/quality tool as it's a ripp off PC-3000 that works ...