Warning about switching from utility reading to PIO reading

[Jared]

So just in case, you haven't ever noticed this phenomenon, I figure I'll just post the warning here. It's something I've known for some time, but just had myself reminded of it again this morning when I messed up.

If you read an Hitachi/HGST drive using the read by utility function of DE, then later switch to PIO or another mode, you must remember to power cycle the drive. Otherwise, all the data it'll be reading will be complete garbage. It'll act like it's reading data, and the sectors it reads will even look like data. But, it's not reading the correct sectors or possibly even just returning crap from RAM that's not the correct data.

I had a case reading by utility over the weekend. For some reason the computer rebooted and when I resumed I started to read by PIO. It seemed to be going quite well cleaning up some of the previously unread sectors, but then I realized that despite the computer having rebooted, the drive connected to PC-3000 never was power cycled. So now I'm having to re-read all the green boxes to make them orange... sigh.

 

[lcoughey]

Same goes for Toshiba.

 

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Well,
Luke and Jared ,This is Bound To Happen As In Toshiba Sometimes Data Is Being Recovered By Just Taking Into consideration P List .I have also experienced DATA Shifting Using Toshiba Techno Utility .Hitachi Should Not Behave Like This If You Have Taken Into Consideration p And G But Could Be a Issue If Only p List is Used ,Have You Tried This Experiment

 

[Jared]

There shouldn't be any shift related to not using the G-list as the G-list only replaces individual sectors with spares. So it shouldn't shift all the data, just maybe read junk data in that one sector if it had been previously re-mapped.

 

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

There shouldn't be any shift related to not using the G-list as the G-list only replaces individual sectors with spares. So it shouldn't shift all the data, just maybe read junk data in that one sector if it had been previously re-mapped.

Correct Observation ,
But i did notice it once or twice .The Toshiba Virtual Translator ignores g list IMHO

 

[michael chiklis]

Yes, it happened to me too with toshiba drives. I thought it was MRT bug but i see now that happens also in pc3k.

It happened to me also with a Fujitsu drive when i tried to read in PIO mode.
The problem appeared after i stopped to read in UDMA mode, i switched into PIO mode, then i pushed start reading, it got stucked for 1 minute, then it started reading all red squares that i wasn't able to read in UDMA mode, they were read very easily in PIO mode (i was very surpriced).
I stopped reading after few seconds because i understood something was wrong from HEX view, i could see reading all over those red squares only as 00 and FF. They were in the middle of good green sectors that had understandable data inside.

P.S.
Not possible to read fujitsu drive via utility, but same kind of issue happened as when i passed from toshiba utility to pio reading without re-powering the toshiba drive.
So i don't know what's the real issue with fujitsu.
Maybe we should always re-power drives when we pass in pio mode?