Possibility to Move a System File Location in SA?

[Jared]

So I'm just throwing this out there. I'm helping a guy remotely with a Seagate case. The drive get's ID after about 2-3 minutes of waiting. Seems that system file 28 and 35 are bad on head 0 so that explains the slow boot followed by ID.

Problem is, every time it hits a bad sector it gets stuck busy (probably trying to read one of those sys files from the bad copy) and never recovers. So it literally has to be power cycled and wait several minutes at every bad sector. Even reading at super low timeouts and in PIO it's still getting stuck busy at every bad... can't seem to find a stable way to image it.

I've tried re-writing the bad sys files from copy 1 (which is good) but they'll still never read back.

Has anyone ever found a way to edit Seagate system files directory like we do with WD? To either move the system files in the SA or just point it to copy 1 instead? Or even to just disable SA copy 0 altogether?

 

[hdd00]

Try to start the drive with H0 disabled so the only available SA copy to be on H1. Of course copy data only from the remainig heads. At least this should speed up the things a little bit.

Rgds

 

[Jared]

Try to start the drive with H0 disabled so the only available SA copy to be on H1. Of course copy data only from the remainig heads. At least this should speed up the things a little bit.

Rgds

I didn't think it was possible to start up a Seagate with head 0 disabled. No one's ever been able to tell me a method that works.

 

[pcn]

What happens if you change hm in RAM after drive initialized? Have you tried hard reset on bad block?

 

[hdd00]

There are some models that work with H0 disabled. It depends of the family and probably the FW versions.

 

[Jared]

What happens if you change hm in RAM after drive initialized? Have you tried hard reset on bad block?

Hard and soft resets both result in the drive stuck busy. Only power cycle gets it back running again.

I was just helping a guy remotely, so it's not my case anyway. I don't think he even has an approved quote, so I'm not wasting any more time on it right now.

My question is more one of a theoretical nature than about this specific case.

 

[Sam]

I read a post on the ACE forum a while back that sort of relates to this.
Something like the reason hot swaps don't work on F3 drives like on others is because the SA components' locations are not consistent and vary greatly from drive to drive.
I suppose if/when ACE figures out how to map the SA like with other brands, options like relocating a module will be available.

You might post this on Hddguru and see if Pepe answers and what he has to say about it...

I found the post from ACE forum:

Re: Seagate F3 HDD hot swap
Postby AJ2008 » 28.04.14, 08:10

At F3 there is over 1GB of space allocated for SA, but SA is not this large so actual position of SA components can vary greatly which makes hotswap very difficult if not impossible , but I am sure in time we will find some way for it