March 24th, 2012, 17:21
JWCC wrote:Hmm, didn't even MFM and RLL drives have sectors reserved for mapping info? I know that some early hard drives were directly controlled by the controller card.
May 4th, 2012, 17:00
Czerno wrote:pcimage wrote:
Isn't such a scheme a shame in your opinion (even if said code is stored in more than one place for redundance) ? Shouldn't the firmware be entirely in (reP)ROM ? Else, as soon as part the "firmware" is damaged, -all- data become inaccessible to an ordinary user who can't afford professional recovery services.
At least if they were honest, disk drive vendors IMO should provide ways for *end users* to update/rewrite a damaged firmware for no additional (or minimal) added cost.
Questions : How *big* is a typical disk "firmware" (that part which is stored on the disk instead of ROM) ? What additional cost would it make on a new disk if enough PROM were provided for the whole operative firmware ? Isn't that industry simply ripping off us customers for its exclusive benefit ?
November 9th, 2012, 16:23
drc wrote:http://files.hddguru.com/index.php
You can find lots of examples hereCzerno wrote:is there a good reason why it isn't kept in ROM instead ?
That would be like trying to solder Windows onto the motherboard
November 9th, 2012, 17:42
November 10th, 2012, 5:06
November 10th, 2012, 8:40
UART wrote:If I were to design one I would have a flash card on the controller board ...
November 10th, 2012, 12:26
November 10th, 2012, 16:26
November 12th, 2012, 5:34
December 22nd, 2012, 3:15
Czerno wrote:pcimage wrote:The vast majority of FW (at least on modern drives) is on the platters, with the ROM info on the PCB just a "kick-start" to read the actual FW from the platters.
So, the operational code necessary to the bare workings of our disk drives is in large part stored on the disk platters themselves! Calling data stored on magnetic disks "firmware" is an abuse in itself BTW.
At least if they were honest, disk drive vendors IMO should provide ways for *end users* to update/rewrite a damaged firmware for no additional (or minimal) added cost.
Questions : How *big* is a typical disk "firmware" (that part which is stored on the disk instead of ROM) ? What additional cost would it make on a new disk if enough PROM were provided for the whole operative firmware ? Isn't that industry simply ripping off us customers for its exclusive benefit ?
TIA
PS: I had a disk (Maxtor) trashed and all data lost in practice for (probably) the cause outlined above. Vendor greed
December 22nd, 2012, 3:22
February 3rd, 2013, 6:39
February 3rd, 2013, 13:22
March 10th, 2013, 2:45
March 10th, 2013, 3:21
May 2nd, 2013, 15:09
August 29th, 2019, 16:03
August 29th, 2019, 18:54
nyse01 wrote:I have a Toshiba HDD built in the year 2001.
September 1st, 2019, 5:27
Czerno wrote:drc wrote:http://files.hddguru.com/index.php
From a cursory peek into one or two of the FW files, it appears disk FW is a few tens of kilobytes at most. How's that comparable to Windows, or even DOS ?
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