Restore A Quick Formatted Drive In Windows? Also Cost Of IDE RAID

I need a program that functions like HDD Regenerator, eg: to restore a
quick formatted partition. DOS and HDD Regenerator won't work with a
usb to ide disk adapter. GetDataBack and the like only want to restore
data to other drives, not restore the same drive.

Forgot to post the ide raid question. I'll formulate and post that
question later.

On Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:09:35 -0700 (PDT), Justin Goldberg
put finger to keyboard and composed:

I need a program that functions like HDD Regenerator, eg: to restore a
quick formatted partition. DOS and HDD Regenerator won't work with a
usb to ide disk adapter. GetDataBack and the like only want to restore
data to other drives, not restore the same drive.

I don't use HDD Regenerator, but the following product does not appear
to "restore a quick formatted partition". Instead its author claims it
will repair "physical bad sectors". shrug

HDD Regenerator 1.61:
http://www.dposoft.net/#b_hddhid

Program features

Ability to detect physical bad sectors on a hard disk drive surface.

Ability to repair physical bad sectors (magnetic errors) on a hard
disk surface.

The product ignores file system, scans disk at physical level. It can
be used with FAT, NTFS or any other file system, and also with
unformatted or unpartitioned disks.

How it works

Almost 60% of all hard drives damaged with bad sectors have an
incorrectly magnetized disk surface. We have developed an algorithm
which is used to repair damaged disk surfaces. This technology is
hardware independent, it supports many types of hard drives and
repairs damage that even low-level disk formatting cannot repair.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

Franc Zabkar wrote:
On Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:09:35 -0700 (PDT), Justin Goldberg
put finger to keyboard and composed:

I need a program that functions like HDD Regenerator, eg: to restore a
quick formatted partition. DOS and HDD Regenerator won't work with a
usb to ide disk adapter. GetDataBack and the like only want to restore
data to other drives, not restore the same drive.

I don't use HDD Regenerator, but the following product does not appear
to "restore a quick formatted partition". Instead its author claims it
will repair "physical bad sectors". shrug

HDD Regenerator 1.61:
http://www.dposoft.net/#b_hddhid

Program features

Ability to detect physical bad sectors on a hard disk drive surface.

Ability to repair physical bad sectors (magnetic errors) on a hard
disk surface.

Well, either this simply runs a long SMART selftest or just
repeatedly tries to read a bad sector, or it is plain fraud.

The product ignores file system, scans disk at physical level. It can
be used with FAT, NTFS or any other file system, and also with
unformatted or unpartitioned disks.

Just as a long SMART selftest or a manual surface read.

How it works

Almost 60% of all hard drives damaged with bad sectors have an
incorrectly magnetized disk surface. We have developed an algorithm
which is used to repair damaged disk surfaces.

Obviously nonsense.

This technology is
hardware independent, it supports many types of hard drives and
repairs damage that even low-level disk formatting cannot repair.

Soooo, low-level access that is hardware independent? Fascinating.

Arno

On 29-Mar-2009, Arno wrote:

Almost 60% of all hard drives damaged with bad sectors have an
incorrectly magnetized disk surface. We have developed an algorithm
which is used to repair damaged disk surfaces.

Either the read/write head is working correctly, or it isn't , and if it
isn't the drive is a doorstop. There can be a bad area due to
defective magnetic media coating, this is usually marked as
non-existant by the mfr. who allocates an equivalent amount
from a pool. Some mfrs have utilities that can mask out a
"small" number of bad locations that develop in use,
and allocate replacements from the pool.
You can't physically repair a damaged disk surface, it is
in a sealed unit.

Justin Goldberg wrote:
Franc Zabkar wrote in
news

On Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:09:35 -0700 (PDT), Justin Goldberg
put finger to keyboard and composed:

Almost 60% of all hard drives damaged with bad sectors have an
incorrectly magnetized disk surface. We have developed an algorithm
which is used to repair damaged disk surfaces. This technology is
hardware independent, it supports many types of hard drives and
repairs damage that even low-level disk formatting cannot repair.

- Franc Zabkar

From following this group I've found that spinrite is absolute rubbish,
and now hdd regenerator is rubbish too?

They claim to do something that is not possible. So, yes.

I've tried to debate with the spinrite developers on news.grc.com using
some of the arguments against it from this newsgroup, but it never goes
anywhere, so I gave up:
http://12078.net/grcnews/article.php....spinrite.dev#
12230

Their product used to have merit in the old MFM times. Today,
they are just cashing in on the remainder of that reputation.

Arno

You can't physically repair a damaged disk surface, it is
in a sealed unit.

You can read it with a scanning tunneling microscope, lol.

True, if you don't mind spending the rest of your days reading
it bit by bit.

On Sun, 29 Mar 2009 18:20:32 GMT, Justin Goldberg
put finger to keyboard and composed:

From following this group I've found that spinrite is absolute rubbish,
and now hdd regenerator is rubbish too?

I believe that Steve Gibson makes some bogus claims (eg that magnetic
domains weaken over time), but the basic methodology behind Spinrite
seems logical to me. By that I mean that Spinrite will turn off ECC
and try to read a bad sector up to 2000 times. If at the end it
doesn't achieve an error free read, then it will try to reconstruct
the sector based on the most probable value of each bit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinrite#Features

OTOH, the author of HDD Regenerator claims that he uses an undisclosed
algorithm which is hardware independent. This would mean that he is
limited to whatever ATA commands are available to him via the ATA
spec, as is Steve Gibson. It seems to me that the easiest "hardware
independent" solution would be to read the bad sector up to 2000 times
and give SMART a chance to reallocate it.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

Franc Zabkar wrote:
On Sun, 29 Mar 2009 18:20:32 GMT, Justin Goldberg
put finger to keyboard and composed:

From following this group I've found that spinrite is absolute rubbish,
and now hdd regenerator is rubbish too?

I believe that Steve Gibson makes some bogus claims (eg that magnetic
domains weaken over time), but the basic methodology behind Spinrite
seems logical to me.

It used to be that, in the old MFM times. It does not work for the
modern encodings used in the last decade or so.

By that I mean that Spinrite will turn off ECC and try to read a bad
sector up to 2000 times.

The reading 2000 times you can do manually. The manual ECC is not
in any way better than what the drive can do.

If at the end it doesn't achieve an error
free read, then it will try to reconstruct the sector based on the
most probable value of each bit.

You do not want that for modern drives. It is not quite as inaccurate
as leaving the sector filles with zeros, but comes close. For most
applications it will either not matter (so zeros can be used) or it
will be a complete desaster anyways (comressed data, e.g.)

If zeros are fine, you can use e.g. dd_rescue (free, very small)
under Linux.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinrite#Features

OTOH, the author of HDD Regenerator claims that he uses an undisclosed
algorithm which is hardware independent. This would mean that he is
limited to whatever ATA commands are available to him via the ATA
spec, as is Steve Gibson. It seems to me that the easiest "hardware
independent" solution would be to read the bad sector up to 2000 times
and give SMART a chance to reallocate it.

Indeed. The Sstrength of the SpinRite description is that it did
make sense for older HDD technology. It does not anymore today.
One thing is that the on-disk encoduing used to be standardized
in the MFM/RLL days and the ECC was standard as well. This is not
true anymore today, and reading with ECC off does not make any
sense. Also because today HDDs use some partial-response maximum-
likelyhood decoding, which means they do not read 0 and 1 but analog
values. You cannot interpret them without exactly knowing what
modulation has been used and what encoding.

Arno

On 30 Mar 2009 05:45:52 GMT, Arno put finger to
keyboard and composed:

The Sstrength of the SpinRite description is that it did
make sense for older HDD technology. It does not anymore today.
One thing is that the on-disk encoduing used to be standardized
in the MFM/RLL days and the ECC was standard as well. This is not
true anymore today, and reading with ECC off does not make any
sense.

I referred to my copy of IBM's Personal Computer AT Technical
Reference Manual. The Fixed Disk Adapter section talks about the Read
Sector command. In those days the Command Register's bit definitions
for this command were as follows:

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
---------------
0 0 1 0 0 0 L T

L = 0 for data only, 1 for data plus 4-byte ECC
T = 0 for retries enabled, 1 for retries disabled

This IDE reference talks about the above Read Long commands (22h and
23h):
http://www.repairfaq.org/filipg/LINK/F_IDE-tech.html

However, I don't see a corresponding command in today's ATA
specification. It was present in ATA-3 but seems to have been retired
in ATA-4.

http://www.t10.org/t13/project/d2008r7b-ATA-3.pdf
http://www.t10.org/t13/project/d1153r18-ATA-ATAPI-4.pdf

So you are correct -- today's drives do not appear to be able to
retrieve the ECC data. My apologies.

There are some claims on Steve Gibson's web site which I don't
understand.

How SpinRite RECOVERS Unreadable Data:
http://www.grc.com/srrecovery.htm

Gibson believes that data can be lost during SMART's reallocation
process. Surely such a claim is bogus:

"Hard disk drives 'heal themselves' by replacing defective sectors
with spares. The problem is that the drive does this on its own,
without asking or notifying, and in the process vital data is
too-easily lost."

He then disables SMART to prevent automatic reallocation:

"The FIRST THING SpinRite does when it starts examining and working
with a drive is to completely disable the drive's built-in automatic
sector relocation. This way the drive can't whisk the sector away the
first time it's not easily read, and SpinRite can study the sector to
recover its data as much as necessary."

What does Gibson mean by "whisk away"? If he means "automatically
reallocate", then surely this is the most desirable outcome. Instead
Gibson hammers away at the bad sector until he successfully retrieves
the data, and *then* re-enables SMART so that the drive can reallocate
the bad sector. This seems pointless to me.

If it is true that there is no longer any Read Long command in the ATA
spec, then I find the following statement curious:

"Rather than ignoring the data from a bad read, SpinRite uses its
unique 'hardware level access' (which no other utility has) to read
whatever data the drive was able to get from the bad sector."

Is Gibson claiming to use some manufacturer specific commands to gain
access to the raw uncorrected data (including ECC ?) in much the same
way as the old Read Long command was able to do? Do some manufacturers
still support an undocumented Read Long command, even though the ATA
spec appears to have retired it?

Gibson also claims that ...

"If several thousand sector re-reads all fail to produce a single
perfect reading, SpinRite next employs the database it has been
building from each failed sector reading. By performing a statistical
analysis of this data, SpinRite is frequently able to reconstruct all
of the sector's data, even though no single reading was perfect."

This begs the question, if SpinRite is unable to read the ECC bytes
from the drive, then how is it able to confirm the integrity of the
reconstructed data?

I also notice the following statement in the ATA-7 spec:

"An unrecoverable error encountered during the execution of [the READ
SECTOR(S)] command results in the termination of the command. The
Command Block registers contain the address of the sector where the
first unrecoverable error occurred. The amount of data transferred is
indeterminate."

This suggests that the data from a bad sector may or may not be
transferred. It may be that only an error status bit (UNC =
uncorrectable) is set. (???)

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.