Software only cloning tool that can do soft resets?

[Spildit]

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

PC-3000 DE it's better that Deppspar Disk Imager 4.

[guru]

Support individual head imaging?

[guru]

Why is it better than DDI4?

[fzabkar]

The ATA commands themselves should be pretty straight forward if the driver allows direct commands to be given.

The OP has written "pass-through" patch for ddrescue that does exactly that.

[Spildit]

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.

Tools like WDR, SRT, etc are NOT depending of external hardware (they use the mapped ports on windows and a driver to gain direct I/O accdess) yet they are capable of doing the Soft-Reset.

I don't think the issue is whith sending a soft reset by software only, as even tests with HDDScripTool revealed that it's possible to do so (put the drive intro sleep mode, etc ....). I think the big question was if there are software only cloning tools that do the soft reset

[Spildit]

Why is it better than DDI4?

DDI4 have it's own bootable code and will not work under a windows OS.
While it does great job imaging (i've used one several times) and while it image/clone by heads and can even do small firmware fix like the WD slow fix, the PC-3000 DE have the big advantage of working with the PC-3000 Utilities.

For example, on a Seagate drive you can boot from a loader with the active utility option on DE, meaning that if you have pending bug or damaged app code or whatever you can boot the drive and directly clone it, while DDI4 can't do that.

Same for cloning Toshiba drives with damaged translator, etc ... DE (or the MRTLabs DE for that matter) are "more powerfull" than DDI4 that it's a cloning tool only.

[Spildit]

Why is it better than DDI4?

I was under the impression that you would have both PC-3000 UDMA with DE and DDI4 ....
Guess i was wrong.

[fzabkar]

It doesn't address the OP's quest for a software solution, but I've always thought that it might be worth exploring the possibility of placing the PCB's "POK" signal, or equivalent, under control of the imaging tool. Hopefully, inactivating this signal will not cause the drive to unload its heads and spin down the motor. With any luck it'll behave like a watchdog timeout and cause the code to reset itself without any "brutal" physical activity. ISTM that a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 drive would be a suitable candidate for experimentation since it uses the well documented SMOOTH L7250 motor controller, as well as identifying the test points on the PCB. A single open-collector transistor driven from a COM, LPT, or USB port would then suffice to control this signal.

[guru]

@spildit no DDI4

[Spildit]

@spildit no DDI4

Uhhmmm...
Interesting
Please check PM !

[maximus]

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.

Can be done directly in Linux without a driver (the program can be the driver). The BIOS has to be in IDE mode for SATA drives (AHCI will not work as there would definitely be a conflict with the driver). And there is the possibility that the hardware (computer) does not properly emulate the IDE mode and Linux ends up using the AHCI driver anyway (have seen that already on one of my computers). Those computers would simply not work with SATA. But computers are cheap compared to data recovery hardware. The up side is that it can run on a computer with Linux installed, or run from a live CD (you have to provide the program on something like a USB stick as it would not be on the live CD).

The trick is to plug the drive in AFTER Linux boots up, and the drive should be the only one on that "channel". I can see a drive when it is plugged in after boot, but Linux does nothing to even give it a listing as a drive. And if it doesn't recognize there is a drive there and there is no other drive on the same channel, there should (in theory) be no driver conflict issue. Still has to be fully tested, but initial tests are proving to be good.

I just figured out how to do the direct I/O last week, and am wondering what the market would be for something like this if I can make it work and be safe and dependable. The downside is I don't do graphical interfaces, so it would be command line. But I can still do simple menus. And I may just have to learn ncurses so I could make a command window interface like testdisk uses.

[maximus]

Hard (power cycle) resets could be done easily with a USBmicro U451 USB Relay Interface. Programming examples are already provided. And it is affordable. More info found here:
http://www.usbmicro.com/

Edit: Just ordered one

[data-medics]

I'm not sure how much it costs but EPOS makes a BadDrive Adapter which is a hardware device capable of setting the timeouts and I'm pretty sure it'll handle the soft/hard resets as needed, while still allowing the system to access the drive as normal: http://www.epos.ua/view.php/products_ep ... ve_adapter

Might be a nice option for you if the price isn't bad.

[maximus]

I'm not sure how much it costs but EPOS makes a BadDrive Adapter which is a hardware device capable of setting the timeouts and I'm pretty sure it'll handle the soft/hard resets as needed, while still allowing the system to access the drive as normal: http://www.epos.ua/view.php/products_ep ... ve_adapter

Might be a nice option for you if the price isn't bad.

Price is estimated at $450. Not cheap and does not do what I would want it to.

[maximus]

I am going to consider this question answered. And the answer would seem to be no, there is not a software only option that can do this. So that would mean it is time for me to start writing one

[Spildit]

I am going to consider this question answered. And the answer would seem to be no, there is not a software only option that can do this. So that would mean it is time for me to start writing one

Cool !
Sounds good

[Spildit]

Well, there is also another issue.
Even if a software tool can do the soft reset you will still be depending on the motherboard to interact with the drive, meaning that if you plug a bad drive to the board and it hangs in a way that soft reset can't take it out of bsy state or if somehow the board doesn't like some output from the drive and hangs you will not be able to do the clone.
It will still be better than not having the soft reset at all, but wouldn't be a match for a hardware cloning tool that deals with the direct I/O with the drive (i'm not talking of hardware tool that can power off/on the drive only).

[royaldsouza1]

well one could create simple circuit which interacts with linux program through usb port. Which inturn is connected to a relay and can do a physical reset or power reset. Whenever the device hangs and cannot be reset the program can instruct the the circuit to do a power reset. This circuit can be built using a simple micro-controllers such has atmega. The whole circuit can built for 10$.
here is one such product
http://www.ebay.com/itm/5V-1-Channel-US ... 1486776468
Well still the software would lack the features of high end hardware device such has selective head imaging. Has this commands are not present in the ata specification

[maximus]

I paid a bit more than that for my USBMicro U451 (almost $45 with shipping)
http://www.usbmicro.com/
But they had a small amount of source code for Linux on their website for me to work with. I have written a small C program for it that can control the relays. I am also curious about getting a USB device that can do JTAG.

I have also been working on direct IO port operations in Linux which give access to perform a software reset. I am hoping to be able produce a new cloning tool in the future, one that does not rely on the operating system to access the disk.

For now, there is ddrescue. With version 1.19 and using my passthrough patch, it should be possible to write a simple shell script that calls ddrescue, and depending on ddrescue exit code could call a program to power cycle the drive via USB device, then call ddrescue again to resume. As for not being able to do selective head imaging, with ddrescue 1.19 you can adjust the skip size to "skip" out of the bad head, and then get any missed data on the good head(s) on the reverse pass.

When Antonio releases ddrescue 1.20, I will make an updated patch that will work a little bit better for the exit code. Someone has pointed out that it currently does not work well in all conditions.

[HaQue]

I am also curious about getting a USB device that can do JTAG.

Don't skimp on this too much, I recommend starting backward in your research to find a USB JTAG tool..
1. work out what JTAG software you want to use
2. research relevant hardware options and make sure the device you choose is well supported - not partially supported or has limitations.