HDDSuperClone Feature Requests

Jared

Administrator
Staff member
A feature that'd really make it worth paying for the pro version of hddsuperclone, is the ability to work with non-standard sector sizes. You know those 520 byte EMC drives. If it could read those drives and migrate to 512-byte sectors on the destination, that'd really make it a miracle tool.

Another feature that I see is lacking, is the ability to zero fill the unread sectors after cloning is complete. It's not a problem is you're cloning to a blank drive or creating an image on a blank drive. But, I notice that it instantly allocates the full size of the image file created. So any sectors which aren't able to be read from the source drive may actually contain remnant data from deleted files on the HDD hosting the image, not actually from the source. So obviously that could be a security issue for anyone using this on a regular basis who doesn't understand this. Perhaps just a final wipe option (set on by default) to zero fill sectors on the destination which weren't read would be a good idea.
 

maximus

Member
A feature that'd really make it worth paying for the pro version of hddsuperclone, is the ability to work with non-standard sector sizes. You know those 520 byte EMC drives. If it could read those drives and migrate to 512-byte sectors on the destination, that'd really make it a miracle tool.
I am not sure if I never saw this post, or just don't remember. I SHOULD be getting notices for all posts here, but not sure if that is happening. Anyway...

1) Would this really be a very desired feature? I think it to be possible.

2) Am I correct that the data is 512 bytes, and the rest is just extra ECC or parity, and can be thrown away for the purpose of normal data recovery?

3) Is there a standard formula (not vendor specific) on how the extra data is used to verify data?

4) Am I correct that these drives are SAS drives, and not SATA? That would mean using the SCSI passthrough, but does not really make an difference for the programming situation.
 

Jared

Administrator
Staff member
1) I'm sure it would be a desired feature for anyone looking to venture into SAN recovery. I know there's been a few times I wished I could clone an EMC drive to just do some experimenting before hiring my normal consultant (who has his own custom software to do this).

2) You are correct, the extra 8 bytes can be omitted.

3) If you read from page 17 onward on this document, it explains all the details of this extra data for EMC anyway: https://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware ... ity-wp.pdf
But there are other SAN units that probably use the extra 8 bytes in a different way.

4) Yes, it is always SAS drives that do this. SATA drives don't support 520 byte sector sizes.
 

maximus

Member
I am glad the extra 8 bytes can be omitted, because it does seem vendor specific (to the SAN), and related to extra info about the RAID array which I am not going to get into.

I have a couple obstacles I would need to overcome to do this. The first is that I have slightly hard coded hddsuperclone to 512 byte sectors. This is not too big of a problem, as it should be provisioned in most places to allow for different sized sectors. I would need to do this anyway to deal with any upcoming 4K native sector drives, which has already been on my mind, although I am not aware of any SATA drives that have 4K native sectors yet.

The big obstacle is that not only do I not have a 520 byte sector drive to test with, I do not have any controller to connect it to. I would need an affordable controller to install in a PCI or PCIe slot on a computer, and it would need to be Linux friendly.

After that, it would just be a matter of adding an option to convert a 520 to a 516 during recovery. I think that would actually be the easy part, although it would add some overhead, not sure if it would noticeably affect cloning speed or not.
 

Jared

Administrator
Staff member
It can be done using any old SAS controller. I know because my consultant has been able to do it remotely several times using my linux machine and a simple AOC-SASLP-MV8 non-RAID controller.

As to a 520-byte sector drive, I just sold off my last one on eBay last week. But, I do occasionally get them dropped off for recycling here from one large client of ours. Pretty much any EMC Clariion SAS drive will be set up with 520 byte sector size. Here's one on ebay for a good price: http://www.ebay.com/itm/EMC-Clariion-2T ... Sw8FRZqFLI

If I get some more in I'll send you one.

I think most 4K SATA drives are able to emulate 512byte sectors so far. But, it's only a matter of time before legacy support for this gets dropped I suppose. Already some SSDs I believe are running native 4K without any emulation. So building flexible sector size into your code is a good way to future-proof the program.
 

maximus

Member
Thanks for the info on the controller. I might ask on HDDGURU for recommendations on a controller that meets my needs and see what the response is. The AOC-SASLP-MV8 is still available if that is what would work the best. Did this work out of the box in Linux?

As for 4Ke (emulated) drives, one thing that I already have in the paid version is the ability to optimize for reading the 4K size. I currently call it blocksize, and for a 4Ke drive you would set the value to 8, meaning 8 512 byte sectors per block. It then does everything it can to read and align to the block size so that all read attempts are a full 4K physical sector.
 

Jared

Administrator
Staff member
The 520-byte sector drives don't seem to natively work in Linux. You can't format/partition them, or do much of that, as the OS doesn't really support the sector size. Linux does see them and assign a /dev designation to them though. You can also use tools like SG3_Utils to issue SCSI commands and even initiate self-wiping. I also know access is possible (using just this cheap controller) to read the data because my SAN consultant has done it several times to image 520-byte sector drives to image files or SATA drives for reconstruction. But, that's using his own custom software he won't even allow anyone to ever see.
 

maximus

Member
I have little doubt that I can read the 520 byte sectors. I use the same SCSI passthrough that SG3_Utils does. It is simply a matter of expecting 520 bytes of data instead of 512. Actually, HDDSuperTool should be capable of reading those sectors with a simple script. I just lack the controller and drive to test with at the moment. The next time you get a 520 drive let me know, I will whip up a script to test reading sectors, if I haven't got a controller and drive yet by then.
 

maximus

Member
I just ordered a used card and drive. Now please forgive me for being stupid, but what cable(s) do I need for this?
 

maximus

Member
I guess I should have looked for the cable type BEFORE buying a drive like the one you referenced. And that is because it is a FIBER CHANNEL connector!!! :eek: :shock: :(
So I have a drive coming that I can't hook to anything. Good thing it was not that expensive. So now I need to find a drive with some sort of regular wired connector instead, and make sure I can get a cable for it before I buy it...
 
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