PC-3000 Flash. 6 Steps to Recover Data from Devices Based on the FC1178/FC1179 Controllers

Posted on 12/18/2020 by ACELab team

Hello friends!

FirstChip Technology started its expansion on the Flash market a few years ago. Today, some of the modern USB Flash drives are based on the FC1178/FC1179 controllers. Data recovery from most of these devices can be intricate because you may face 1-bit size bad columns, adaptive XORs, and very complex internal translations while working with them.

The good news is our developers have done a tremendous job in extracting XOR to add some of the FC1178/FC1179 controllers to the Support List. Now, you can recover data from even more NAND Flash devices! And, in this article, you will find the steps on how to do it.

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PC-3000 for HDD. Password Reset Procedure on Self-Encrypted Seagate F3 Drives

Posted on 11/11/2020 by ACELab team

Hello Friends!

Sometimes you may come along a Self-Encrypted Seagate drive that has a user password set by its owner. A common ‘Reset password‘ option doesn’t work because the option requires Power OFF/ON step, and the drive is SED locked.

How to deal with this case? Find the step by step procedure right in the article below.

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PC-3000 Portable III. Apple Macbook SSDs: the Supported Interface Types and Issues

Posted on 09/30/2020 by ACELab team

Hello friends!

Over the past years the PCIe interface has become very common in Solid State drives. However, until 2020 it was not possible to recover data from such damaged SSD devices. The PCIe lines inside the PC-3000 Portable III tool give you the ability to recover data and evidence from the PCIe SSDs along with the ATA-based devices. But it doesn’t stop here!

Our developers constantly add more drives to the SSD Support List. During the ACE Lab Online Technology Conference 2020 we have announced the Apple NVMe drives support. Now you can recover data from modern Apple-based SSDs with our new PCIe NVMe/AHCI Adapter for Apple Macbook SSD.

However, a number of Apple Macs, released between 2013 and 2016, were left unreached because they are based on the proprietary NON-NVMe architecture – the Apple AHCI PCIe protocol. So, this September we have released the beta version 6.8x of the PC-3000 Portable III. The update allows you to deal with all types of PCIe SSD drives, including the Apple AHCI ones that were hugely popular in the Macbooks, Mac Pro, and iMacs from 2013 and onwards.

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PC-3000 Portable III. Recovering Data from Logically Damaged Plextor PX-512M8SeY with a New PCIe x16 SSD Adapter

Posted on 09/16/2020 by ACELab team

Hello Friends!

As you know, the PC-3000 Portable III supports the PCIe SSDs along with the SATA-based devices. Also, thanks to the new adapters and software updates, we constantly add new drives to the supported list. In September 2020, we have released the new PCIe x16 SSD Adapter for custom and native NVMe SSDs with PCIe x1-x16 interface.

It is extremely useful for drives that have a full-size PCIe bus as the only option of plugging in an SSD (e.g. Intel DC P4618 or Samsung PM1733). You may come upon such drives in server platforms and data centers because they are very stable and powerful. However, bad sectors can still appear due to prolonged use. In this case, the new PCIe x16 SSD Adapter paired with the PC-3000 Portable III System helps to bypass bad sectors and get the data from SSDs.

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PC-3000 Flash. How to Recover Data from the NAND Flash Drives with the COB (Chip on Board) Memory Chips

Posted on 08/28/2020 by ACELab team

Hello friends!

The COB (Chip On Board) memory chips present a challenge to data recovery engineers trying to recover data from them. The main obstacles lie in their internal structure: under the coating of black plastic, there is just a NAND crystal with small traces connected to the PCB. The procedure of coating removal is very dangerous since you can easily damage the NAND core. And even if you succeed, it doesn’t mean that you can read data from such a chip.

So what can you do if a NAND Flash drive with the eMMC chip that has a disabled controller, the COB controller, or even the COB memory chip ends up on your desk? In this article, we will show you the unique way to handle these untypical but commonly encountered cases.

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PC-3000 Portable III. The Standalone Mode to Diagnose Drives, Create Sector-by-sector copies, and Erase Data Without a Host Computer

Posted on 08/12/2020 by ACELab team

Hello, guys!

As you well know, our new PC-3000 Portable III tool has a built-in screen and it’s own Operating System, which allows communicating with connected drives without a host PC!

In this article, we are going to find out what features of the Standalone Mode are available to the owners of the PC-3000 Portable III.

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PC-3000 Data Extractor. How to Merge a Sequence of Bin Files into One Image File

Posted on 07/22/2020 by ACELab team

Hello friends!

Let’s imagine the following situation:

After you have finished recovering data, you get only a sequence of binary files which contains recovered raw data that were deleted or corrupted (e.g. task.prm, map.bin, and other files related to the task settings). Or, say, you have used some other tool for data imaging and got some sequence of binary data files as well.

What to do with this? Let’s find it out in our new article


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PC-3000 SAS. How to Change Sector size and Edit Power-on Hours.

Posted on 07/08/2020 by ACELab team

Hello Friends!

Some SAS drives have a limitation in their FW: they work for some time (Power-on Hours value written inside of FW), but when the time is over, the drive stops working no matter its condition. Also, some NAS systems can require a special sector size: 512/520/528 bytes per sector. These issues can be successfully solved with the PC-3000 SAS, beginning with ver. 6.7.12, if a drive is supported. So, let’s see how to deal with that.

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PC-3000 Flash. A One-Click Solution – Now in the Transformation Graph!

Posted on 07/01/2020 by ACELab team

Hello friends!

Did you ever struggle with applying a solution from the PC-3000 Flash Solution Center? With the new “Execute (graph)” function, you can apply a solution and automatically create a transformation graph with all actions that had already been done. And it greatly facilitates your work with the PC-3000 Flash!

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PC-3000 SAS. How to Сhange FW, Model, and Vendor with the “Download microcode” Feature.

Posted on 06/25/2020 by ACELab team

Hello Friends!

As we know, SAS drives are mostly used in special NAS systems. These server systems are configured to work with particular special drives, and if any SAS drive gets damaged, the NAS system will not work with another HDD. This issue can be solved (for supported SAS drives) by changing the vendor ID with the PC-3000 SAS, starting from ver. 6.7.12. Let’s see how to deal with that!

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