(Preamble: In a perfect world everything would stay
backed up, be protected by RAID or other redundant
technology, and the threat of lost data would never be
an issue. In real life, my friends give me drives that
are unresponsive for a variety of reasons, and the
following scenario is one I need help with.)
My current understanding of modern IDE drives is that
the uCode ROM on the electronics package is just smart
enough to spin the drive up, at which point the drive
loads the rest of its instructions (RAM uCode) from a
special location on the platters (minus / service
tracks), and when that info checks out, the drive
finally hangs out the "open for business" sign and is
recognized by the BIOS.
This is a generalization, but I think this is
approximately what happens for lots of drives.
Sometimes the uCode data can be hosed, and since the
"minus tracks" are off limits to the user, only a
special program, controller or special factory
programming can reset this data.
I've seen several drives that spin up like a champ, and
even with a new, exactly matched electronics package
still refuse to talk to the outside world. And all this
without any evidence of a drive crash or rough handling
or anything.
Rather than just "HDD Error", it'd be nice to have some error message that hinted at the nature of the problem. Sometimes I just feel like I'm guessing as I replace one thing after another.
One big objective I have would be to locate (if they
exist) ANY drives out there that would permit reflashing
of the firmware / uCode without first being able to
validate the info that's on the drive.
One indication of this possibility would be if a rare
drive model had flashrom large enough to store all of
the uCode there, before loading it into RAM on the
electronics package after startup. With flashrom
becoming cheaper, this is a possibility.
It's not reality, but it makes sense to me that you
should always be able to recover most of your data from
a drive with good media, good mechanics and good
electronics.
The fact that just a little gibberish in the wrong
place can render a drive useless is enough to make me
nuts!
backed up, be protected by RAID or other redundant
technology, and the threat of lost data would never be
an issue. In real life, my friends give me drives that
are unresponsive for a variety of reasons, and the
following scenario is one I need help with.)
My current understanding of modern IDE drives is that
the uCode ROM on the electronics package is just smart
enough to spin the drive up, at which point the drive
loads the rest of its instructions (RAM uCode) from a
special location on the platters (minus / service
tracks), and when that info checks out, the drive
finally hangs out the "open for business" sign and is
recognized by the BIOS.
This is a generalization, but I think this is
approximately what happens for lots of drives.
Sometimes the uCode data can be hosed, and since the
"minus tracks" are off limits to the user, only a
special program, controller or special factory
programming can reset this data.
I've seen several drives that spin up like a champ, and
even with a new, exactly matched electronics package
still refuse to talk to the outside world. And all this
without any evidence of a drive crash or rough handling
or anything.
Rather than just "HDD Error", it'd be nice to have some error message that hinted at the nature of the problem. Sometimes I just feel like I'm guessing as I replace one thing after another.
One big objective I have would be to locate (if they
exist) ANY drives out there that would permit reflashing
of the firmware / uCode without first being able to
validate the info that's on the drive.
One indication of this possibility would be if a rare
drive model had flashrom large enough to store all of
the uCode there, before loading it into RAM on the
electronics package after startup. With flashrom
becoming cheaper, this is a possibility.
It's not reality, but it makes sense to me that you
should always be able to recover most of your data from
a drive with good media, good mechanics and good
electronics.
The fact that just a little gibberish in the wrong
place can render a drive useless is enough to make me
nuts!