PC-3000 for HDD. Seagate F3 utility. Solution of service area problem by loader

Posted on 06/10/2015 by ACELab team

Lets look on the situation when Seagate F3 drive successfully reach Ready State, launch the motor spindle, but as soon as we trying to launch Seagate F3 Utility, drive goes in BSY state and show LED:CC error message.
In this situation drive have a correct Drive ID but capacity is missed for some reason. This behaviour might appear if the drive can’t to initialize techno mode via utility. The reason of such problem could be caused by overlays issue.
In this video we would like to show how to fix this problem by loading overlays in RAM by loader.

loader 01 loader 02

 

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PC-3000 HDD. How to solve “No HOST FIS-ReadyStatusFlags” error

Posted on 06/10/2015 by ACELab team

One of the most popular problem with Seagate F3 drives is problem with Translator.
In this video we would like to show you how to fix “No HOST FIS-ReadyStatusFlags“ error.
We have a drive that remains in Busy state and not recognize in utility.
First of all we need to determine what a problem exactly.
Let’s open utility forced and switch on the power supply.
Take a look on the terminal report.
As we can see drive have few error messages that allow us to understand a problem:
SIM ERROR 3005 (mean that “format corrupted flag” in on and Translator is not loaded in RAM)
“No HOST FIS-ReadyStatusFlags” (reason message: why translator is not loaded).

Such behavior could be if drive have problem with:
– Translator
– Service area
– Heads issue
– PCB issue

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PC-3000 HDD. How to transfer service area module to another place in DIR

Posted on 06/09/2015 by ACELab team

Sometimes might be the situation when one or more modules in Service Area of WD drive is damaged. The plot of this problem is simple – all heads are working fine, but the place where the module is situated filled by BAD sectors, and any writing operation in this place is impossible. As the result, we get the situation when user area will not be available untill we will not fix this damaged module.
In this video we would like to tell you how to transfer SA module from damaged place to another healthy part of Service Area.

P.S. Don’t forget to turn-on Subtitles! 😉

Sub

 

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PC-3000 SSD. Indilinx Barefoot family

Posted on 06/08/2015 by ACELab team

In this video you will find detailed description how to recover data from SSD drives based on Indilinx Barefoot (IDX100XXXX) controllers. Also, this video contain information about functionality, options and different features which are presented in this Active Utility.

Vertex

Supported Models:

  • OCZ Vertex 1;
  • OCZ Solid 2 series;
  • Crucial M225;
  • Corsair Extreme series;
  • Other models based on IDX100M0\M1\M2-M3 controller;

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PC-3000 Flash. How to change the page size

Posted on 06/08/2015 by ACELab team

One of the most popular problem in modern tasks – try to find correct XOR for data re encryption. About XOR you always can read more information by the following link.
In this article you will find the way, how to change page size and fit it for XOR, which was not possible to detected before.

As we all know, controller which is used the physical space of memory chip, sometimes does not use a part of the area, where SA should be replaced. In this situation, controller just put FF-FF-FF bytes instead service structures. After dump reading, we can cut this FF-FF-FF values, and reduce the page size, for example, from 8640 bytes to 8576 bytes and probably find XOR which was available only for 8576 byte page size before.

EXAMPLE:

We get the case with controller SM3257EN and with 1 physical flash chip

1

After chip reading, we can launch ECC Autodetection, and try to find ECC description. If our case does not have any inserts, we should see the following record in log:

2

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PC-3000 Flash. How to search and apply XOR from the list of available patterns

Posted on 06/08/2015 by ACELab team

XOR – is some kind of special operation which allows controller encrypt data with special pattern. So, basically we can call it “soft encryption”, because this XOR can change user data and does not allow us to find any headers in dump.
All modern controllers which are situated in Flash drives use XOR. It help to reduce wear effect on small NAND Flash cell’s and improve the quality of reading data from memory chips (with less number of bit errors during writing and reading data).
The first thing that user should do before he will try to find any headers in dump – eliminate XOR. Exist several rules for XOR detection and elimination.

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PC-3000 Flash. How to use dump of memory chip from other readers

Posted on 06/05/2015 by ACELab team

When you read memory chip in PC-3000 Flash reader its raw image is stored into “dmp” file (you can find this file in folder of task) sector by sector.
Reared creates the dump of chip in accordance with memory chip parameters (reading algorithm, page size, capacity, etc).
As far as we know all readers/programmers read chips by this algorithm.
Hence you can create task in PC-3000 Flash using dumps read via other readers.

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PC-3000 SSD. Active Utilities (Main concept description)

Posted on 06/05/2015 by ACELab team

For a long time, data recovery from SSD drives was very complicated and take too much time. For one SSD case engineer should waste around 1 week of his time, trying to detect the correct order of memory chips, eliminate all controller preparations and finally, build image with user data.

For example, in this solution from GSC, you can see – how may joining preparation contain a common Intel SSD drive:

1

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PC-3000 Flash. How to unsolder BGA/LGA-52 memory chips

Posted on 06/05/2015 by ACELab team

This video will describe the procedure of unsoldering memory chips in BGA/LGA-52 package.

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Don’t forget to turn on the English subtitles and annotations! Current Video does not contain any sound! Only subtitles in Russian and in English! :)

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PC-3000 Flash. How to detect the correct order of memory chips

Posted on 06/05/2015 by ACELab team

PC-3000 Flash  allows users to change or manipulate the order of already read memory dumps from the NAND memory chips. This option is found under “Transform Graph” section once the reading process of all memory chips is completed. However, there is a way to detect the correct order of memory chips at the beginning of the NAND reading process.

photo 1

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