PC-3000 Flash. Circuit Board adapter and TSOP-48 memory chips

Posted on 10/09/2015 by ACELab team

PC-3000 Circuit Board adapter is a really good and useful thing. First of all with the help of this adapter you can read the data from monolithic devices like mSD, SD, xD, MS and UFD. But at the same time, Circuit board works great in case if for some reason, we need to read data from common chips like TSOP-48, TSSOP-48 (short package) or BGA-52 with physical damages of pin legs.

Lets imagine that during chip unsoldering you damaged several legs of TSOP-48 memory, and you are not able to put it inside PC-3000 Flash reader. What should you do in this case? Of course you can try to repair this legs, make a serious job under microscope and restore the functionality of damaged legs. But this process will be very complicated, and during next chip installation into Flash reader socket, you can damaged them again.

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PC-3000 for HDD. Building ROM image from SA data on WD Marvell drives with internal ROM using version 5.X

Posted on 09/24/2015 by ACELab team

The method can be used to recover original ROM image and then write it into donor PCB when original PCB was damaged, lost, or original ROM was lost.

The “Building ROM image from SA data” tool was fully revised in the PC-3000 6.0 software version so the process is different from 5.X versions.
We have another article about the process for PC-3000 v6.X that can be found here.

The procedure allows to recover full image of original ROM and all ROM modules.

The procedure is applicable to almost all WD Marvell architecture drives with internal (integrated into processor) ROM, that has SA modules 102, 103, 105, 107 and 109. Some firmwares has SA module 109 that doesn’t contain necessary data – ROM image. If we open such 109 module in HEX-editor we’ll see that it is filled with zeroes. In such cases the utility can’t built the image and gives error.

This procedure is not applicable to drives with external ROM IC (U12) as well as to classical WD Caviar architecture drives(non-Marvell).

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To perform the procedure the SA and at least one system head should be OK.

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PC-3000 Flash. Block rotation in Phison PS2251-03

Posted on 08/24/2015 by ACELab team

Block rotation – it’s a special operation which is typical for some of Phison, noname, Phison-clone and Sandisk controllers. Basically – it’s some kind of operations where inside block, one group of pages are always rotated. Controller of Flash drive just choose the position inside each block, split the block in this position, and move the end part of it in the beginning – as the result, all headers which must situated in beginning of block like for example – Master Boot Record, moving somewhere in the middle of block. All files become split too – and their integrity usually become not complete even after all preparations!

Block rotation

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PC-3000 for HDD. Heads stack adaptive parameters(Microjogs) transfer on WD drives

Posted on 08/12/2015 by ACELab team

Sometimes after heads stack replacement the new heads stack works not stable. That occurs because every heads stack has its unique adaptive parameters. Those parameters are stored in module 47 of ROM.

The adaptive parameters are more different from one batch of drives to another and is connected with date of manufacture. That is why it is recommended to select donor drive for heads stack with the closest date of manufacture possible. Some heads stacks from exactly the same drive as your patients can be totally incompatible due to these parameters.

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PC-3000 for HDD. RAM Head map editing on WD drives (non-system head case)

Posted on 07/31/2015 by ACELab team

In some cases a drive with one or more malfunctioning heads can finish the initialization process without any visible errors. But when we try to read user area it results in error and no user data can be read. For example it can occur when one or more heads have problems with writing.

The procedure allows to get access to data on all normally working heads of the drive when SA and at least one of system heads are OK.

The main idea of this method is to to trick the drive calibration procedure through substitution of a normal head instead of a malfunctioning one. Consequently it works with drives using two or more heads.

Also it can be applicable when one of the system heads is damaged. In such cases the patient drive may produce clicks, knocks and turn down the spindle. This case will be reviewed in details in the next article.

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PC-3000 Flash. How to unsolder TSOP-48\56 memory chips

Posted on 07/22/2015 by ACELab team

In this article we will try to describe the optimal way for NAND memory chip unsoldering in TSOP-48 or TSOP-56 package. Before you will start the whole procedure of unsoldering, you must be sure that you have all required tools, enough time and patience! 🙂

This procedure is very important for further data recovery. If you will overheat chip – cells inside memory might be destroyed, and the number of bit errors will seriously grown up. If you will not heat the contacts well enough, you can damaged them during chip removing and make your further recovery very-very complicated or even impossible.

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PC-3000 for HDD. The HOT SWAP procedure for Western Digital Marvell drives

Posted on 07/14/2015 by ACELab team

The “HOT SWAP” procedure can be used to restore logical access (i.e. an opportunity to read data using Data Extractor) in cases when system heads are inoperable (calibration procedure cannot be successfully completed because a drive is knocking and fails to initialize completely all the items it needs to operate via logical access), or when service area restoration is not possible (no opportunity to rewrite modules).

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PC-3000 Flash. Page tranformation

Posted on 07/09/2015 by ACELab team

All the data stored in a flash microchip is divided into several categories:

1. Page (a group of sectors, 4-8-16 or more (varies from chip to chip))
2. Block (a group of pages, 64-128-256-258 or more)
3. Bank (a group of blocks)
4. Dump (a complete image)

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Each sector contain 512 bytes of the Data Area and some bytes of the Service Area. For example, “classics” sector structure is: 512 bytes of Data + 16 bytes of SA.

The Service Area contains some data that is used by controller, for example it can contain the marker with block number or some ECC codes. SA can be located after each sector, or in the last sector of the page – it depends on the flash chip and controller.

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PC-3000 for HDD. How to solve the Slow Responding Problem

Posted on 07/08/2015 by ACELab team

If a WD drive spins up and quickly gets into the ready state, but requires a lot of time to autodetect and fully initialize in the WDC Marvell utility, and if it is read in the Service area modules and user data very slowly, it is highly probable that the drive has a Slow Responding problem.

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PC-3000 can easily solve this problem and make the drive work fast like a new one, if the heads, platters and PCB are in good condition.

Here are the step-by-step instructions.

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PC-3000 DE. Data Extractor RAID Edition. First steps. (Part 3)

Posted on 07/08/2015 by ACELab team

This part is a continuation of part 2.
We proceed to work with RAID array and focus on assembling RAID configuration in interactive mode.

A quick introduction:
Sometimes RAID array metadata are damaged or RAID has a non-standard configuration.
Data Extractor RAID Edition enables advanced users to build RAID manually in interactive mode.

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