HDD issues.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: HDD issues.

this is simply not a fault with the software. u think such a critical bug/flaw would not have gone unnoticed by the devs? maybe on windows but linux? no focking way!

he already mentioned the drive power cycling during read. this symptom is 90% caused by power supply problems to the drive. the remaining 10% its a virus that likes power cycling drives during read to make them unreadable? otherwise i cannot see how a software could produce the problems the TS described.

I could see perhaps a driver issue causing the drive to reset. After all, reading the log with dmesg, it seems the driver was what was resetting the drive. I agree though, a problem like that would be fixed real soon in Linux I'd think. We can pretty much rule out ddrescue. I've used it so many times in the past with no troubles, just recently on some old school floppies. I think we pretty much figured out the problem. As soon as I plugged it into the desktop SATA ports and powered it via the desktop's PSU, the drive stopped recycling. Definitely hardware like you're thinking.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: HDD issues.

most dont have SAT support. good cases do. but not all.


Assuming that the rating of the brick is fudged is not a bad thing.
I always assume on those bricks that they just tacked the TOTAL rating of the tranny as the rating of both rails. 1.5/2=.75 would be the actual rating per rail. A Samsung laptop drive sitting on my desk has a minimum (they always seem to list the minimal) of .85 amps.

This case has an eSATA port. If I where to use that instead of the USB port, would that provide the SAT commands you think? Using the eSATA port I would think would be equivalent to just plugging the hard drive directly into the PC...is this not the case? Would I still be using the USB to SATA bridge?

[Spork Schivago]

Re: HDD issues.

Hard drives can report SMART data via USB provided that the USB-SATA bridge firmware supports SCSI-ATA translation (SAT). This allows any ATA command to be tunnelled through the bridge by encapsulating it within a SCSI command packet. Earlier bridges had proprietary methods for doing the same thing, while the earliest bridges had no support for SMART. A tool such as smartctl (smartmontools) should be able to retrieve the SMART data. Otherwise there are Windows tools such as CrystalDiskInfo, HD Sentinel, HDDScan, etc.

WD's drives have problems with oxidisation at the HDA contacts. These contacts can be cleaned with a soft pencil eraser.

Oxidisation on Western Digital PCBs:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.p...6&t=649&p=1789

WD's drives also suffer from the "slow" problem. Professional data recovery tools have a single-click solution which is often called the "slow fix" or "dealing with slow responding". AIUI, this turns off reallocation and retries. Essentially it does what ddrescue tries to do, but at the firmware level. You can do the same thing by purchasing a one-month licence for WD Marvel (US$15), or you can apply the free solution described here:

http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.p...29187&start=20

http://www.alexsoft.org/viewtopic.ph...8&p=4345#p4345

There is a free Linux tool, with source code, (by KHONG How Yu) that modifies the same two firmware modules:

http://mod32patch.sourceforge.net/
http://mod2patch.sourceforge.net/

Thank you for the explanation. I believe I know what you're talking about with the "slow" problem. I've seen the "fix" myself as well. Maybe a couple years back? Modify a setting on the hard drive, a configuration option or something, perhaps in the firmware, and all of a sudden, you get a much faster drive.

This a WD Blue. With almost every laptop I repair, if it has a WD hard drive and the HD is dead, almost always, it's a blue. Things aren't really built that well I don't think.

I had a utility in Linux I was playing with once. I just looked at the source code and wrote my own code to send reset commands to the hard drive. It was locked and the person forgot the password. I had to use ATA commands sent directly to the hard drive with passwords, every third attempt would lock the hard drive and I'd have to restart. I tried brute forcing it but never got it. There was also a BIOS password they forgot. I built some circuit board to extract it from something called the TPM (Trusted Platform Module). I still have that. The password was some swear word, like ass or something. I thought hey, maybe the password for the hard drive is a swear word too. Tried everything I could think of and never guessed it.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: HDD issues.

this is simply not a fault with the software. u think such a critical bug/flaw would not have gone unnoticed by the devs? maybe on windows but linux? no focking way!

he already mentioned the drive power cycling during read. this symptom is 90% caused by power supply problems to the drive. the remaining 10% its a virus that likes power cycling drives during read to make them unreadable? otherwise i cannot see how a software could produce the problems the TS described.

[keeney123]

Re: HDD issues.

At this point everyone is guessing what is wrong. Somehow you must eliminate the possibility of the software causing the problem. So , you software people out there how would he eliminate the software as possibly causing the problem? Once you eliminate that possibility then I would tear into it and proceed with the other hardware suggestions.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: HDD issues.

when doing data recovery, u want to get the data off in the fastest and most glitch free method. so use a native sata connection.

doing data rescue via usb is more prone to glitches than a native sata connection as u are at the mercy of how well or sheety they designed the usb bridge/sata converter. also, if the connection is usb2, u slow down the recovery process. u want to get the data off as quickly as possible and not kill the drive during recovery.

the -n switch is for grabbing all the data off the good sectors as quickly as possible. then if the drive is still alive after the initial mass data grab, u can now try the recovery of the bad sectors.

this is especially important if the drive has tons of bad sectors in the beginning of the drive. for example, u dont want the program to stay stuck at the beginning 5gb of the drive trying to read bad sectors. what about the other 745gb of data? u want to prioritize all the good sectors which waaay outnumber the bad considering the capacity of drives these days.

the -n switch is also useful for performing extreme data recovery methods thereafter. an example of an extreme deep freeze hard drive data recovery method is to use -n for the first pass to grab all the data off the good sectors. then coat the hard drive in vaseline (to protect against condensation) and chuck it in the freezer overnight. then in the morning quickly plug in the drive and quickly try to recover only the unread sectors (which are all the bad sectors) while the drive is frozen at subzero temps.

sometimes bad sectors become readable again during subzero temps but become unreadable again when the drive heats up. so if the drive heats up and sectors become unreadable again just keep repeating the freezer trick until all the bad sectors are recovered and voila u have saved 100% of your data!

[goontron]

Re: HDD issues.

Not true. SAT support is the norm.

https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/S...ed_USB-Devices

With the market inundated with cheap chinese crap.... i stand by my post. However i will correct my post to "good cases"

[fzabkar]

Re: HDD issues.

most dont have SAT support. High end cases do. but not most.

Not true. SAT support is the norm.

https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/S...ed_USB-Devices

[goontron]

Re: HDD issues.

Hard drives can report SMART data via USB provided that the USB-SATA bridge firmware supports SCSI-ATA translation (SAT). This allows any ATA command to be tunnelled through the bridge by encapsulating it within a SCSI command packet. Earlier bridges had proprietary methods for doing the same thing, while the earliest bridges had no support for SMART. A tool such as smartctl (smartmontools) should be able to retrieve the SMART data. Otherwise there are Windows tools such as CrystalDiskInfo, HD Sentinel, HDDScan, etc.

WD's drives have problems with oxidisation at the HDA contacts. These contacts can be cleaned with a soft pencil eraser.

Oxidisation on Western Digital PCBs:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.p...6&t=649&p=1789

WD's drives also suffer from the "slow" problem. Professional data recovery tools have a single-click solution which is often called the "slow fix" or "dealing with slow responding". AIUI, this turns off reallocation and retries. Essentially it does what ddrescue tries to do, but at the firmware level. You can do the same thing by purchasing a one-month licence for WD Marvel (US$15), or you can apply the free solution described here:

http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.p...29187&start=20

http://www.alexsoft.org/viewtopic.ph...8&p=4345#p4345

There is a free Linux tool, with source code, (by KHONG How Yu) that modifies the same two firmware modules:

http://mod32patch.sourceforge.net/
http://mod2patch.sourceforge.net/

most dont have SAT support. good cases do. but not all.

I do believe you figured it out Goontron! I just had no idea something like this was happening because of the 1.5A transformer. I knew laptop drives didn't need that much, but wow, boy did I learn something new today.

ddrescue shows:

[FONT="Courier New"]GNU ddrescue 1.18.1
About to copy 300061 MBytes from /dev/sdc4 to /home/spork/backups/sdc4.img
  Starting positions: infile = 0 B, outfile = 0 B
  Copy block size: 128 sectors    Initial skip size: 128 sectors
Sector size: 512 Bytes

Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
Initial status (read from logfile)
rescued:   5906 MB, errsize:    0 B, errors:    0

Current status
rescued:   6612 MB, errsize:  8650kB, current rate:   524 kB/s
  ipos:   6635 MB,  errors:   143,  average rate:  1613 kB/s
  opos:   6635 MB, run time:  7.88 m, successful read:    0 s ago
Copying non-tried blocks... Pass 1 (forwards)
[/FONT]

Thank you so much!!!! Now I can successfully run ddrescue. Are you familiar with the program? Following the example someone used when they had the same issue, the command is:

ddrescue -d -v -n -A /dev/sdc4 /home/spork/backups/sdc4.img /home/spork/backups/sdc4.logfile

Supposedly this helped them a bit. I normally use something more like:

ddrescue -d -r3 /dev/sdc4 /home/spork/backups/sdc4.img /home/spork/backups/sdc4.logfile

And then I just try it over and over again until the drive dies or there's no more errors. The -d means direct disk access (no disk caching, etc), -v means verbose, -n means no-split (skip the splitting phase) and -A means try-again (mark non-split, non-trimmed blocks as non-tried). My -r3 means retry-passed = 3. (exit after <n> retry passes (-1=infinity) [0])

I don't really understand the whole skip the splitting phase and mark non-split, non-trimmed blocks as non-tried. Usually, with a dying drive, first pass, I won't set r at all, just so it doesn't kill the drive faster.

Assuming that the rating of the brick is fudged is not a bad thing.
I always assume on those bricks that they just tacked the TOTAL rating of the tranny as the rating of both rails. 1.5/2=.75 would be the actual rating per rail. A Samsung laptop drive sitting on my desk has a minimum (they always seem to list the minimal) of .85 amps.

[fzabkar]

Re: HDD issues.

Hard drives can report SMART data via USB provided that the USB-SATA bridge firmware supports SCSI-ATA translation (SAT). This allows any ATA command to be tunnelled through the bridge by encapsulating it within a SCSI command packet. Earlier bridges had proprietary methods for doing the same thing, while the earliest bridges had no support for SMART. A tool such as smartctl (smartmontools) should be able to retrieve the SMART data. Otherwise there are Windows tools such as CrystalDiskInfo, HD Sentinel, HDDScan, etc.

WD's drives have problems with oxidisation at the HDA contacts. These contacts can be cleaned with a soft pencil eraser.

Oxidisation on Western Digital PCBs:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.p...6&t=649&p=1789

WD's drives also suffer from the "slow" problem. Professional data recovery tools have a single-click solution which is often called the "slow fix" or "dealing with slow responding". AIUI, this turns off reallocation and retries. Essentially it does what ddrescue tries to do, but at the firmware level. You can do the same thing by purchasing a one-month licence for WD Marvel (US$15), or you can apply the free solution described here:

http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.p...29187&start=20

http://www.alexsoft.org/viewtopic.ph...8&p=4345#p4345

There is a free Linux tool, with source code, (by KHONG How Yu) that modifies the same two firmware modules:

http://mod32patch.sourceforge.net/
http://mod2patch.sourceforge.net/

[Spork Schivago]

Re: HDD issues.

I use a salvaged old 110w ATX PSU to power drives I'm connecting to a USB adapter.

I wish I could do that, but this USB / eSATA enclosure won't allow me to. It's more like a caddy that sites on the desk and I push the drives into it, so they're standing vertical. It has a SATA port built into it. It came with our E3 flasher when we bought it for dumping the NAND on the PS3. Replacing the transformer with a higher quality one wouldn't fix this issue, right? I'd need a different USB adapter that allows me to power the drive directly, right?

[Spork Schivago]

Re: HDD issues.

SMART will attempt to recover the sectors, causing a spike in power draw. I see this with desktop drives, so whether it's as big of a power change on a laptop drive i don't know.

let me dig up an old thread about that....

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=35254

I do believe you figured it out Goontron! I just had no idea something like this was happening because of the 1.5A transformer. I knew laptop drives didn't need that much, but wow, boy did I learn something new today.

ddrescue shows:

[FONT="Courier New"]GNU ddrescue 1.18.1
About to copy 300061 MBytes from /dev/sdc4 to /home/spork/backups/sdc4.img
  Starting positions: infile = 0 B, outfile = 0 B
  Copy block size: 128 sectors    Initial skip size: 128 sectors
Sector size: 512 Bytes

Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
Initial status (read from logfile)
rescued:   5906 MB, errsize:    0 B, errors:    0

Current status
rescued:   6612 MB, errsize:  8650kB, current rate:   524 kB/s
  ipos:   6635 MB,  errors:   143,  average rate:  1613 kB/s
  opos:   6635 MB, run time:  7.88 m, successful read:    0 s ago
Copying non-tried blocks... Pass 1 (forwards)
[/FONT]

Thank you so much!!!! Now I can successfully run ddrescue. Are you familiar with the program? Following the example someone used when they had the same issue, the command is:

ddrescue -d -v -n -A /dev/sdc4 /home/spork/backups/sdc4.img /home/spork/backups/sdc4.logfile

Supposedly this helped them a bit. I normally use something more like:

ddrescue -d -r3 /dev/sdc4 /home/spork/backups/sdc4.img /home/spork/backups/sdc4.logfile

And then I just try it over and over again until the drive dies or there's no more errors. The -d means direct disk access (no disk caching, etc), -v means verbose, -n means no-split (skip the splitting phase) and -A means try-again (mark non-split, non-trimmed blocks as non-tried). My -r3 means retry-passed = 3. (exit after <n> retry passes (-1=infinity) [0])

I don't really understand the whole skip the splitting phase and mark non-split, non-trimmed blocks as non-tried. Usually, with a dying drive, first pass, I won't set r at all, just so it doesn't kill the drive faster.

[SteveNielsen]

Re: HDD issues.

I use a salvaged old 110w ATX PSU to power drives I'm connecting to a USB adapter.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: HDD issues.

Wow, great thread there Goontron! I never released how cheap the transformer was!

[goontron]

Re: HDD issues.

I cannot retrieve the S.M.A.R.T. data using 3rd party tools when it's running through a USB / eSATA to SATA bridge? I did not know this.

I questioned this originally but figured because I was able to successfully recover so much data, it wasn't the case. The enclosure is not self powered. It has a transformer to power it.

However, just to rule it out once and for all, I'll hook it up directly to my PC later and give it a shot. I've read of others with the same issue and for them, hooking it up to the SATA controller directly didn't help at all. Good idea though. I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks

SMART will attempt to recover the sectors, causing a spike in power draw. I see this with desktop drives, so whether it's as big of a power change on a laptop drive i don't know.

Output of the transformer is 12V, 1.5A. It's actually made for desktop hard drives as well as laptop, just not the smaller, laptop hard drives. It feels a bit cheap though. I think maybe you posted this before I posted my post about it being not self-powered and having a separate transformer. I will still try it directly plugged into my Desktop.

let me dig up an old thread about that....

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=35254

[Spork Schivago]

Re: HDD issues.

yes, do that. Those USB laptop cases have sparse power. definitely not 1amp worth! Unless you are on USB3.

Output of the transformer is 12V, 1.5A. It's actually made for desktop hard drives as well as laptop, just not the smaller, laptop hard drives. It feels a bit cheap though. I think maybe you posted this before I posted my post about it being not self-powered and having a separate transformer. I will still try it directly plugged into my Desktop.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: HDD issues.

get it on an internal PSU bus. Your case may not be providing enough power by the looks of it. Also if you're using the USB bridge you cant send SMART commands beyond the necessary ones for normal operation.

I cannot retrieve the S.M.A.R.T. data using 3rd party tools when it's running through a USB / eSATA to SATA bridge? I did not know this.

I questioned whether it was something with the enclosure or not at first but I figured because I was able to successfully recover all the data from the other partitions, it wasn't bad. The enclosure is not self powered. It has a transformer to power it.

However, just to rule it out once and for all, I'll hook it up directly to my PC later and give it a shot. I've read of others with the same issue and for them, hooking it up to the SATA controller directly didn't help at all. Good idea though. I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks

[goontron]

Re: HDD issues.

Internal laptop SATA 3.0Gbps WD 750 GB hooked up to an external enclosure right now. I haven't tried hooking it up directly via the onboard SATA ports on my PC yet. I should probably do that before I tear the thing open. We can successfully read data from other partitions and I was able to successfully clone my wife's 500GB laptop hdd, so I know it's not the enclosure. Before that though, I also tried using E-SATA and tried another USB cable just to rule that out.

Any ideas STJ? dmesg kinda tells me why the drives resetting. It appears it finds a bad sector while trying to read and then for some reason, the driver actually restarts the drive. So I guess damage on the platters is looking more and more like the problem.

yes, do that. Those USB laptop cases have sparse power. definitely not 1amp worth! Unless you are on USB3.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: HDD issues.

internal drive, or external?

Internal laptop SATA 3.0Gbps WD 750 GB hooked up to an external enclosure right now. I haven't tried hooking it up directly via the onboard SATA ports on my PC yet. I should probably do that before I tear the thing open. We can successfully read data from other partitions and I was able to successfully clone my wife's 500GB laptop hdd, so I know it's not the enclosure. Before that though, I also tried using E-SATA and tried another USB cable just to rule that out.

Any ideas STJ? dmesg kinda tells me why the drives resetting. It appears it finds a bad sector while trying to read and then for some reason, the driver actually restarts the drive. So I guess damage on the platters is looking more and more like the problem.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: HDD issues.

It could be anything: bad heads, bad sectors, dying electronics, etc. But does it really matter ?
Knowing why the drive behaves like that most likely will not help you save the data.

Try to save what you can and replace the drive.

Yes, it does really matter. If it's something like a dying PCB, I might be able to replace the PCB. Depending on the drive, people have had varying degrees of success. Same with changing the heads. People have made portable clean rooms (and granted, this is recommended) and have successfully replaced parts inside the hard drive long enough to recover the data. I know what risks are involved. And it'd be something, if I could find out what was really causing the problem, I'd do just for the fun of it.