New Linux Tool - HDDSuperTool

maximus

Member
Jared":16ip1wjk said:
The only thing it can't do is soft/hard reset a drive when it becomes unstable. I'm hoping this new tool will have that capability.
It already has this ability in direct IO mode with the scripting. But the free version only allows PIO access which is obviously too slow to clone a drive.

Edit: To clarify, it can perform soft resets. A hard reset is a power cycle. I don't think this can be done with a software only tool. You would have to have an external relay device most likely connected via USB and a program that could control it. The scripting can call external programs, so it would be capable of doing a power cycle as long as the program and hardware were supplied.

Forgot to mention that I have a USBmicro U451 USB Relay Interface for hard resets. It isn't the cheapest thing available, but it was the only one I had found that had sample C code for Linux. I would have no problem sharing the code I made for it.
 

maximus

Member
Jared":3pgkwtm9 said:
I don't think like that chart. A timeout of 20 seconds on some drives will kill the heads long before you get a decent amount of data. 60 seconds is just excessive. My experience is that for most drives (WD & Seagate at least) if a single sector doesn't read in 850-1000ms, it's never going to read.
Agree. Most drives will timeout after 2-5 seconds for an error. You would need to be below that to avoid possible device faults which would require power cycling the drive. Another reason to use 1000ms or less is to increase the speed of processing the drive. Why the hell would you want a 20-60 second timeout? :shock:
 

Jared

Administrator
Staff member
maximus":12hotf7e said:
Jared":12hotf7e said:
Edit: To clarify, it can perform soft resets. A hard reset is a power cycle. I don't think this can be done with a software only tool.

No, there's a difference between a hard reset and a power cycle. Hard reset tells the drive to reinitialize and reload it's service area, while I don't know the specific command, it can be issued via ATA.
 

maximus

Member
Jared":um18k78l said:
I believe this document has some information about it: ftp://ftp.t10.org/t10/document.04/04-262r8.pdf
Even the soft reset doesn't work in the passthrough, at least not in Linux. I have never got either reset to work. They just return a sense code of invalid cdb field. I don't think Linux totally follows that standard.

If there is a hard reset, it would be done by accessing the pci controller. That would be the same method required for setting DMA timing, and I have not done that yet. And I am not sure it would do much good. All the documentation I have seen states that the drive requires a power cycle once it is in device fault.
 

pclab

Moderator
Great post until now.
I hope Maximus can develop a great tool.
@ maximus: as you might know, in the DR area, sometimes a price that you think it's high it's really not. There are tools costing some hundreds of dollars..
We just want a tool that's works, for the best price as possible.
 

maximus

Member
pclab":10q0zyxf said:
@ maximus: as you might know, in the DR area, sometimes a price that you think it's high it's really not. There are tools costing some hundreds of dollars..
We just want a tool that's works, for the best price as possible.
The tricky part will be that I plan on targeting two separate groups. The first is those that perform data recovery on a regular basis, and may be willing to pay a decent amount for such a tool. But I also want to try to get some of those that are trying to rescue a drive with ddrescue for the first time, and running into issues where it is not going well for them (very slow, drive keeps dropping out...). That group would not be willing to pay as much. I am not sure where or if I will find that balance. But first I have to make it worth paying for...
 

Jared

Administrator
Staff member
Might I offer a third suggestion... instead of releasing this as a software only product, build it into a custom linux image that can run either on something like a bannana pro, intel NUC, or another micro sized linux capable machine. That way you can sell it as a complete imaging tool, and you can tailor build it to work well with that particular chipset. Maybe even give DDI a run for their money.
 

pclab

Moderator
Tried it today, but couldn't make it work...
nuno@nuno-System-Product-Name:~/Transferências/hddsupertool-1.1-1.0$ sudo hddsupertool -t /dev/sdf -f ata_scan_device.txt
sudo: hddsupertool: command not found
The command is right, yes?
 

maximus

Member
pclab":2xwytlo5 said:
Tried it today, but couldn't make it work...
nuno@nuno-System-Product-Name:~/Transferências/hddsupertool-1.1-1.0$ sudo hddsupertool -t /dev/sdf -f ata_scan_device.txt
sudo: hddsupertool: command not found
The command is right, yes?
First is if you are in the folder where hddsupertool is, you need to add ./ in front of hddsupertool:
sudo ./hddsupertool -t /dev/sdf -f ata_scan_device

Second, Linux may not allow it to run as a program and will actually produce the same error. I usually fix that by right clicking on the executable and check the box in the properties tab to allow running as a program. I actually don't know if you can change that property from the command line.

Third, when you get past that, you will find that all the scripts no longer have .txt at the end and that will produce a script not found error. Do I still have that in the help for that script? If so, I need to go back through them all again. I thought I removed it in all of them. Also, if the script is in in the hddscripts folder and you are not in that folder then it will require the proper path (hdscripts/ata_scan_device). I may need to clarify that also.

May I suggest you run it with the following command to get the menu driven script system, and not providing -t will list all drives to choose from:
sudo ./hddsupertool -x

And if that works and you have your BIOS in IDE mode, or have actual IDE drives attached, you can try this for direct IO mode:
sudo ./hddsupertool -d
 
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