I think I have the pending bug on a hard I'm trying to repair.

It is my understanding that the pending bug arises because read times for users sectors become quite long
due to head problems et all and the firmware due to this ups the priority on the off line scanning (background) jobs.
The result is very slow access and come ready times.


My question is, why couldn't a head swap along with a pcb hot swap cure this problem long enough to do an image?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Also any links to references about pending bug with technical descriptions would also be appreciated.


Thank you...

thanxs for reply....I tried that....can not get drive to respond to smart commands.
It does come ready after 5-10 mins or so.
But once a command (ident) for example is given it become busy again.

Thanxs again for reply...

I have a usb2rs232 line on way....Once hooked up it will confirm or deny the hypothesis.
But everything points in that direction.
I' using mhdd right now on it...
For example...
The drive on spinup will take 5 mins to come ready.
Now I know everyone is thinking (SA) problems.
Perhaps, but the funny thing is once it comes ready I can send it an Ident command and after about
another 5 min wait I'll get a serial/model etc.
Now if I send it an scan (mhdd command) which of course translates to reading a sector in ATA lang it hangs again.
I can even get it to read sectors with mhdd and it returns data.
But it's very slow and once the xfer is done it takes quite some time to become ready again.
All of this points me in the direction of the pending bug.

any help would be appreciated.

Will do...
You have any links for technical description of pending bug....
I'd like to confirm what I stated earlier.


Thanxs

I found this to explain pending bug....
Sound reasonable? What do you think?

http://www.hardmaster.info/eng/articles/20-01-2009.html

Are you really sure with with $SFI and AMR it is "pending bug" ?

Sorry I won't be.
It's not in my current project agenda to broadcast galaxy-wide my know-how, otherwise how can I buy new tools ?

_________________
Iorana Haraharaini

This don't look like pending bug, more likely weak head.

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Rescue IT Datarecovery service Sweden
Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
http://www.rescue-it.se

Wouldn't weak heads give you an abort etc?
I mean....If I issue a read ATA command to a drive and it tries a number of times to read a sector
I should get an Abort, AMNF or IDNF etc and then the drive will drop BUSY.

I really don't see how weak heads would cause this, although I believe weak heads could lead to this via increasing access
and causing pending bug.

quick question.....even if your using a pc-3000, how do you break out of the pending bug cycle in order to place
the drive in a state where it will accept ata commands?

Just to answer the question to anyone who wants to know of how to fix the "Pending Bug" with PC-3000:

1. Open Utility and Create LDR for the drive
2. Create Task in DE making sure to check the box labeled "Active Utility Actions"
3. When the "Utility Special Actions" box comes up (after selecting the source/target drives) select "HDD Initilization" and then select "Extended Settings"
4. Select your LDR file you created
5. Under the heading "App" select "Loading from LDR"
6. Under "Available App Modifications" select the Fix(s) you want to apply (most likely "Fix Pending Bug")

And then the drive should operate much faster. You may have to play around with a few settings if the drive dosen't come ready, but it should be pretty self explanatory from there.

Hope this helps someone facing this issue.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company