Two articles on hard drive repair-page 1/2 of hard drive repair and data recovery

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• Author: Zhiming

Having spent a lot of effort posting these two articles, I think it is worth it. I have encountered many hard drive problems with my computer for so long, and many problems have not been solved. What makes me very sad is that the loss of hard disk data is caused by humans. This kind of data is returned several times and I have read this information for a while, in the past, I wanted to create a manual for restoring data that is incomplete. When there are no conditions, I wanted to create conditions. When conditions were met, I did not do so ......

Can software repair hard disks? -- Full analysis of Hard Disk damage Author: Zhiming Preface

This is what the author wrote to me: "I have been writing this article for a long time. I have never written this article because I am worried that my knowledge is insufficient due to my personal sense of responsibility, facts cannot be judged comprehensively and objectively. Now, after several months of data searching and repeated tests, dozens of hard disks are torn down and damaged, and I think I have enough facts to make a judgment, so I wrote this article. Because this is a popular article targeting all users and consumers, I am not going to talk about specific technologies and complex theories, but only about basic principles and actual results. It is hoped that this article will help the majority of DIYer to recognize some facts and make clear judgments on various advertisements and seemingly professional advertisements ."

To be honest, there are too many "words in this text. If the words are seen by the proofreaders, they will not scold me. However, I always feel that these words all contain some emotions of the author, so I decided to keep them so that you can be infected with the same emotions, instead of worrying about being replaced by an unhandled edited hand pen, it will lose its original taste.

In other words, when reading our magazines, readers should first understand knowledge rather than grammar. It is based on this that, in the critical period of magazine production, a topic originally being prepared is removed, and this article is changed temporarily -- that is to say, we think this article can bring more gains and shocks to readers. That's right! This article is not a simple article about knowledge popularization, but a disclosure of Hard Disk issues that are of common concern to users. Why is the hard disk vulnerable to damage? How does the manufacturer fix the hard drive? How does a hard disk repair company repair bad hard disks? Can the software really fix bad hard disks? Next, you will find the essence of the problem.

Starting Point of dispute

Hard disks have always been the most important storage device in computer systems and are also the most vulnerable component in computer systems. Over the past decade, the computer's CPU has been operating at an unknown speed. from dozens of MHz to more than 3 GHz, the computing and processing functions have been greatly improved over several generations. Other components, such as the video card, sound card, and optical drive, have also been replaced by many generations. Only the most important storage device, hard drive, has greatly improved its capacity and speed, however, the basic structure and working principle remain unchanged, and the hard disk is more vulnerable to damage due to the increase in Hard Drive Speed and disk density. In general, if the hard disk is faulty during the warranty period, you must find the seller's warranty or replacement as soon as possible. However, the warranty period of most IDE hard disks is only one year, after this period, if the hard disk fails, you can only consider spending money to repair or purchase a new hard disk.

Hardware damage is inevitable

I just threw away hard drives that have been used for more than a year or two. Unfortunately, most users also want to spend the least money to make full use of their computer components. In order to cater to this saving mentality, the second-hand hard drive market has developed rapidly over the past two years, and some hard drive repair companies that sell hard drives have emerged one after another, more appeared a lot of hard disk repair software that is said to be able to repair Bad Sectors of the hard disk, such as HDD Regenerator, MHDD, PC-3000 and efficiency source, and so on, some of which is to promote their own professional software, it can repair the Physical Bad Sectors of the hard disk and does not affect the hard disk capacity, resulting in a daily price of more than 10 thousand yuan. Especially when Russia's PC-3000 entered China, this information was even more eye-catching.

[Note: PC-3000 is a commercial professional hard disk repair integrated tool developed by the famous Russian hard disk Laboratory ACE Laboratory, it can crack the instruction set of various types of dedicated hard disk CPU, the Firmware of various hard disks can be interpreted to control the internal work of the hard disk, read and write the hard disk parameter module and call the hard disk program module, so as to fix various hard disk defects with software. In addition, it also has its unique functions in data recovery, and it is difficult for most OEM hard drive manufacturers to fully master these features. After more than ten years of research, ACE Laboratory has been able to support most of the new and old models of IDE interface hard drives with a capacity of 40 MB to 200 GB. Its powerful hard drive repair function has been recognized by professional hard drive repair companies around the world. At present, there are thousands of professional users around the world, it is said that thousands or tens of thousands of defective hard disks are repaired with a PC-3000 every day.]

For ordinary users, if hard disks with physical bad sectors can be repaired, the cost for purchasing new hard disks can be saved. For second-hand hard disk vendors, the price of a hard drive with a bad track is much lower than the price of a hard drive without a bad track. If you can shake a hard drive without a bad track, you can make more profits. For hard drive repair personnel, with these software, you can use a computer to open a shop on a desk. An average of 40 RMB for each hard disk to be repaired is also a good business. For agents selling these software, each sales set is 7000 ~ The profit of RMB 8000 is even more of a fat business. Therefore, driven by various forces, different groups started a series of publicity with different purposes, making these software more eye-catching. As a result, many forums on hard drive repair, second-hand hard drive, and hard drive technology have aroused a large number of discussions and even battles. Interested readers can go to the storage online (http://www.stol.com.cn) forum.
Can the software repair the hard disk? To solve this problem, we must first talk about the internal structure of the hard disk, and first understand the cause and mechanism of the hard disk damage.

Hard Disk Structure

Hard Disk Internal Structure

There have been a lot of articles on hard disk structure, but if you really want to make it clear, you can't finish writing a book, so I won't go into detail here. I just want to understand that the hard disk structure described in many articles, technical materials, and even textbooks has been a very old hard disk structure. All new hard disks do not adopt such a structure, but adopt a more complex and scientific structure.
In old-fashioned hard drives, the old CHS (Cylinder/Head/Sector) architecture is used. A long time ago, when the disk capacity was very small, people used a structure similar to a floppy disk to produce the hard disk. That is, each track of a hard Disk has the same number of sectors, resulting in a so-called 3D Parameter (Disk Geometry), that is, the number of magnetic Heads (Heads) and the number of Cylinders) sectors and corresponding 3D addressing methods.

CHS Architecture

Among them, the number of Magnetic Heads indicates that the hard disk has a total of several heads, that is, the number of disks with a maximum size of 255 (stored in 8 binary bits ); the number of cylinders indicates the number of tracks on each disk of the hard disk. The maximum value is 1023 (10 binary bits are used for storage). The number of sectors indicates that each track has several sectors, the maximum value is 63 (6 binary digits are used for storage). Each slice is generally 512 bytes. Theoretically, you can take any value you like, however, it seems that no other value has been found.
Therefore, the maximum disk capacity is:
255 × 1023 × 63 × 512/1048576 = 8024 MB (1 M = 1048576 Bytes)
Or hard disk vendor commonly used units:
255 × 1023 × 63 × 512/1000000 = 8414 MB (1 M = 1000000 Bytes)
Because the number of sectors of each track is equal in the CHS structure of the old hard disk, the record density of the external track is much lower than that of the internal track, which wastes a lot of disk space (the same is true for floppy disks ). To further increase the disk capacity, hard disk manufacturers now use the same density structure to produce hard disks. That is to say, the track length of each sector is equal, and the sector of the outer ring track is more than that of the inner ring. After this structure is used, the hard disk no longer has actual 3D parameters, and the addressing mode is changed to linear addressing, that is, addressing is performed in units of sectors. To be compatible with the old software that uses 3D addressing (such as the software using the BIOSInt13H Interface), the vendor usually installs an address translator inside the hard disk controller, it translates old 3D parameters into new linear parameters. This is also why there are multiple options for the current 3D parameters of the hard disk (different working modes can correspond to different 3D parameters, such as LBA, LARGE, and NORMAL ). With the increase in disk density, the further complexity of the mechanism, and the increase in functions and speed, today's hard disks are all divided into a relatively large disk capacity, a region called a "system reserved area", used to store various information, parameters, and control programs of a hard disk, some even make the Fireware of the hard disk A system reservation (the original information is stored on the chip of the hard disk Control Board ). In this way, although the production process can be further simplified to speed up production and reduce production costs, on the other hand, it greatly increases the probability of fatal damage to the hard disk and shortens the service life of the hard disk. My MB hard drive and GB hard drive eight years ago have been used very well now, not to mention bad channels. The sound is useless even when running, however, the 4.3 GB, 6.4 GB, 10 GB, and 20 GB hard disks were not used for more than four years, and all of them were damaged.

Category of Hard Disk damage

In general, hard disk damage can be divided into hard damage and Soft Damage by category.

Hard damage includes four types: Head Assembly damage, control circuit damage, comprehensive damage, and fan area physical damage (generally referred to as physical bad channels.

※Damaged head assembly: This mainly refers to the situation where a part of the head assembly in the hard disk is damaged, resulting in the failure of reading or writing some or all of the heads. There are many ways and possibilities for damage to the head assembly, including dirty head, wear, cantilever deformation, damage to the magnetic coil, and displacement.

※Control circuit Damage: A part of the electronic circuit board of a hard disk is broken or short-circuited, or some electrical components or IC chips are damaged. As a result, the disk cannot be properly switched after the hard disk is powered on, or after the boot, the head cannot be correctly searched.

※Comprehensive damage: It mainly refers to various problems caused by slight changes in the hard disk. Some are hard disks, which may lead to aging of some chips due to heating or other reasons; some are the small changes or displacement of the shell, disk surface or motor spindle after the hard disk is shaken; some are defects in the design of the hard disk in terms of heat dissipation, friction, or structure. Various causes lead to unstable hard disks, frequent data loss or logical errors, high noise, slow reading/writing speed, and sometimes normal operation but sometimes not normal operation.

※Physical damage to the slice: physical damage to the disk surface due to collision, head friction, or other reasons, such as scratches or demagnetizing.

Soft Damage includes Magnetic Track servo information error, System Information Zone error, and fan partition logic error (also known as logical bad track ).

※Track servo information error: the physical track cannot be accessed because the servo information of a physical track is damaged or invalid.

※System information area error: refers to the system information area of the hard disk (a system reservation area inside the hard disk, which is divided into several modules, stores many factory parameters, settings, and internal control programs of the hard disk. When the power-on self-check is performed, some module information cannot be read or the verification is abnormal, resulting in the hard disk cannot enter the preparation status.

※Sector logic error: It indicates that the verification error (ECC error and CRC error), Sector flag error (IDNF error), and address information error (AMNF error) bad Block tag errors (BBM) and other causes cause the failure of this sector.

In general, it is possible to repair the Soft Damage of the hard disk. The hard disk management and maintenance software (DM) released by many hard disk manufacturers can repair the Soft Damage of the hard disk. For problems such as sector logic errors, even low-level formatting software is fully qualified. However, among all the soft damages, System Information Zone errors are difficult to repair, because even the hard disks of the same manufacturer and model are not necessarily the same; in addition, hard drive manufacturers generally do not disclose the system information area and read instruction code of their products. But for IBM and Hitachi hard drive users are lucky, Hitachi's DFT and IBM DDD-SI software on the system information area error still has a relatively high success rate of repair. These two software are really hard drive maintenance software released by hard drive manufacturers (DFT is still free). They have very powerful functions, efficiency and reliability are much higher than those written by a third party who asks for more than yuan. Unfortunately, they are only valid for IBM and Hitachi products.
Of course, if it is only to Repair Soft Damage, an original DM software can complete more than 90% of the tasks, there is no need to buy the so-called professional software of tens of thousands of yuan, and now HDD Regenerator, MHDD, PC-3000 and efficiency source and so on these software, in propaganda shows that they are not only for soft damage, in addition, the physical bad channels and even some IC damages can be repaired!

PC-3000 hard drive

It cannot be said that their propaganda is exaggerated, Because theoretically this is indeed possible. If our hard disk breaks down during warranty period and is handed over to the manufacturer, they also need to repair the hard disk. So, now we need to know about the manufacturer's hard disk repair methods and processes, to see how the manufacturers repair, and pure software repair is different.

Manufacturer's hard drive Repair Method

Here, we can explain to you that even the new hard disks from the manufacturers do not have any flaws. Because the disks on the disk are relatively precise, they have very high requirements for the production environment and movement. Even a small dust collision will produce several to hundreds of Bad Sectors. Therefore, in general, according to the current hard disk capacity of GB, it is not impossible to create a new disk even if there are thousands of Bad Sectors. However, hard disk manufacturers will use specialized devices to scan disk slices, record Bad Sectors and unstable magnetic sectors, and create a hard disk defect list, which will be written into the system retention area, these sectors are closed through the control program, and the control program of the hard disk does not read these areas when reading the hard disk. Today's hard disks have a lot of information written into the system reservation area due to their complex functions and parameters. In this way, the problematic slice has been closed at the underlying control level, so no matter what formatting and partitioning software is used, the user will not see this part of information, it looks like there is no bad track at all. At the same time, there is another closed area in the hard disk, also known as the reserved capacity, which is actually a good disk, but it is closed for some reason. For example, if a hard disk is 60 GB and the disk capacity is 40 GB, a hard disk consisting of two disks must be closed with a capacity of 20 GB (the production line of the disk is certain, to reduce costs, the manufacturer only produces one type of disk capacity, and obtains different actual hard disk capacity by sealing different capacity areas ).

Hard Disk manufacturers can scan and test disk slices on machines that can process 600 disks per hour

Hitachi small compaction machine used to rewrite servo information, which can process 8 hard disks at the same time

After figuring out the hard disk production principle, the manufacturer can understand how to maintain the hard disk. The most simple replacement method for damage to the control circuit and head is to replace the new parts. If the IC chip is damaged, you can rewrite the information of the IC chip or simply replace the IC chip for repair. The problem with disk disks is complicated. First, the manufacturer will use specialized equipment to re-scan the disk surface based on the actual physical address, and check all bad and unstable sectors, form a new hard disk defect list, write it into the system information area of the hard disk, and replace the original hard disk defect list. Then, call the internal low-level formatting program to format the hard disk. The program re-numbers and clears all the channels and sectors based on the new system information area, and overwrites the track servo information and sector information. After such processing, the hard disk to be repaired can be the same as the new hard disk.
Someone may be wondering-since there are new bad sectors added to the system retention zone,

So, is there no difference between the repaired hard disk and the new hard disk? There is a technical problem involved here-the difference between the restrained and divergent nature of the damage. I would like to leave it to the end to talk about how the third-party software repairs hard disks.

Repair principles of third-party software

The third-party software we are talking about here is mainly about repairing the physical damage to the hard disk sector-there is no good discussion about logical Bad Sectors, and it is not difficult to fix them. Currently, there are two main ways for third-party software to repair physical damage to hard disk sectors: reverse magnetization and hard disk defect list modification.
Reverse magnetization is the first method to fix physical damage to hard disk sectors. Generally, the hard disk head is only responsible for reading and writing signals, while the level signal required for reading and writing data signals is different from the magnetic media on the disk surface. Reverse magnetization forces the head to generate high and low level signals corresponding to the magnetic media by using software instructions, and repeatedly magnetic the damaged or lost magnetic sectors through multiple reciprocating motion, re-obtain the magnetic capacity of these sectors. HDD Regenerator is the first software to adopt this method. Later, some software, by analyzing its algorithms and instructions, also mastered the signal of reverse magnetization, adopts the same or similar engine for reverse magnetization. It should be noted that there are many so-called professional hard drive repair companies on the market that have released some software that claims to be able to repair bad hard drive channels, which usually costs about 300 yuan, in fact, they only use binary editing tools such as Ultra Edit and Pctools to rewrite the interface information of HDD Regenerator. Alternatively, they can shell HDD Regenerator and change it with their own shell interface. To put it bluntly, it is the pirated HDD Regenerator, which must be clearly distinguished. The biggest drawback of reverse magnetization is that the speed is slow. The magnetic head is likely to be repeated hundreds or even hundreds of times when the magnetic medium is unstable or the magnetic capacity is lost, if the hard disk has only dozens or hundreds of bad sectors, it is also possible to slow down. However, today's hard disks are prone to hundreds of GB of capacity, and it is common to have tens of thousands of bad sectors. At this time, if this method is used for repair, it will probably not be repaired to 10%, the head will be deformed due to fatigue. Hard disks that can be used after hidden partitions will be permanently decommissioned. In addition, the magnetic medium of these sectors is unstable. Even if it is magnetized, it can be used for a period of time, but it is dangerous to lose the magnetic capacity at any time. In fact, the hard disk is not stable. At the same time, this method does not fix hard damage caused by physical scratches.

Modifying the hard disk defect list is to improve reverse magnetization. This method is very similar to the hard disk manufacturer's repair method mentioned above. As mentioned above, hard drive manufacturers generally do not disclose the information content in the system information area of their hard drive products and the instruction code they read. However, some technical staff analyze and reverse engineer the information, attackers have cracked the manufacturer's instruction code and even Fireware so that they can compile program software to read, modify, and write information from the hard disk system information zone freely. In this way, they can also write programs like hard disk manufacturers to scan the disk surface according to the physical address, re-construct a new list of defective sectors, and write them into the system reserved area to replace the original list. Hard Disks repaired by such software are theoretically the same as hard disks repaired by hard disk manufacturers. This software because of this function, so the price is very expensive, PC-3000 to tens of thousands of yuan, efficiency source Professional Edition (retail version can only repair ECC errors and CRC errors, in fact, what can not do) more than six hundred, in addition, they do not include technical support for future upgrades, because these software has a very critical weakness-after all, the data they obtain through cracking is illegal to some extent. Different Hard Drive manufacturers, or even different hard drives of the same manufacturer, have different control codes for the system retention zone, and different Fireware. In order to make the software universal, they must constantly crack new hard disk models to make the software support more hard disks. If you have purchased a set of software and they need to continuously upgrade and support it, they absolutely do not want to, in order to repair more new hard disk models, you must pay the upgrade fee continuously. On the other hand, if the information in the system information area of the hard disk is cracked well, it is okay. If the information is not cracked well, after the information is modified, if it is light, the hard disk will frequently encounter errors during reading and writing, which is unstable. If it is heavy, the hard disk will be reimbursed.

Final Analysis

As I have mentioned above, there is still a difference between the Repair Disk and the new hard disk. What is the difference? It is very simple. In a brand new hard disk, physical damage to the sector is generated during the production process; While physical damage to the hard disk to be repaired is generated during use. Different physical damages directly affect the damage to the environment.

To illustrate this problem, although this is not necessarily the case in the electroplating process, it is indeed the scope of materials science and technology, even the disk surface cannot be processed. If the plating is too thin or not plated in some places due to some reasons, this part is the defective part, and it will be easily oxidized and rusted. This part of rust will spread and expand to the original well plated, no defect, but this process is very slow, because this defect is formed together with the coating during the production process, and the edge of the coating is well closed, this defect is restrained and its spread and expansion will be slow. If the original coating is intact, and you scrape a part of the coating with a knife, then there will be a divergence defect. In this defect, you not only damage the coating of the defective surface, but also damage the edge of the intact coating. In this defect, the spread and expansion of oxidation and rust are very fast, and soon a large area of oxidation and rust can be produced in the intact part.

The same is true for the production of Hard Disk disks. As we all know, bad sectors will spread. Even if these sectors are closed and not read/write, they will also spread on the disk. In the Bad Sectors formed during the production process, the surrounding magnetic medium crystals are still uniform and dense, and the physical properties are still quite stable. In such an environment, the spread of bad sectors is a very slow process, I am afraid that even if the hard disk's service life has reached, it has not spread far. However, in the process of using the bad slice produced by collision and scratches, the surrounding magnetic medium crystals are in the broken and loose state. In this way, the spread of this bad slice will be very fast, it is very likely that you have just closed it, and it will spread to the intact area that is not closed. Due to this potential instability, in North America, hard disks are usually labeled with a repair record and sold at a very low price (about 1/2 to 1/3 of the market price ), some companies have even simply sold all their repair returns to the markets of Asia or some third-world countries.

For hard disks that have been repaired, the hard disk manufacturer repairs the hard disk and provides software to the maintenance personnel. Although theoretically based on the same principle, the actual effect is still different. Software repair requires the hard disk head to constantly read and write each sector to determine whether the disk does lose its magnetic capacity. This read/write process may have to be cycled hundreds or more times. In this way, it takes a long time to read and write data from one slice. For example, if the MHDD is used, a GB hard disk is scanned by default, it may take 48 hours or even five days (depending on the bad disk situation, the time is quite different), and it must work continuously. In this way, the damage to the hard disk head and disk itself is very large, and it is not a good disk. After such a hard disk, even if it is repaired, do you dare to install some useful data?

If the hard disk manufacturer repairs the disk, they will use specialized machines, which use optical principles to check the disk surface for errors (The details are more clever, so I won't talk about it, physical or electronic friends should know), rather than using a head to really read and write the disk surface. In such a machine, when different types of sectors-intact and defective: such as scratch on the disk surface, magnetic medium impurities, magnetic medium loose, magnetic instability, etc., through the detection point, different feedback optical signals are generated. The machine records all defective sectors and Corresponding sector locations based on the feedback optical signals and creates a hard disk defect list. Because it does not use a physical head to read and write data, scanning and checking are not only fast, but also can cause much less damage to the disk.

Conclusion and some additional words

Now, can we draw some conclusions? I will leave it alone. Readers should be able to make their own judgments. I have no doubt that the people who write these hard drive maintenance tool programs are geniuses, or even those who crack other people's program engines, but everything has its own objective rules, it will not be transferred with the propaganda and will of some people. Software can achieve many functions, but in the same way, there are some functions that they cannot and cannot achieve. In this world, there is no xiandan that can cure all diseases, and the same is true for software.
Now the price of hard disks is getting cheaper and cheaper. As long as 600 yuan is used for 80 GB hard disks, the designed service life is about three years. To be honest, if you want to repair a 20 GB hard drive for 100 yuan or buy a second-hand 20 GB hard drive for more than 150 yuan, I just want to buy a new one-even if I have repaired the hard disk or bought a second-hand hard disk, I am absolutely not at ease using this disk to store important data.
However, I do not completely reject second-hand hard disks. After all, they are relatively cheap. They are also a good choice for users who do not need large capacity and only need basic functions and purposes. At present, Guangzhou is the most developed second-hand market in China (limited to normal channels for discussion, and abnormal channels in some places are very developed, but not in the scope of this discussion ), panyu is the largest distribution center for second-hand computer spare parts and peripherals. Many sellers of second-hand hard drives in the Mainland purchase goods through Guangzhou and then send them to the mainland. For a single retail merchant, the daily transaction volume of second-hand hard disks is several or a dozen. However, for wholesalers who use second-hand hard disks, the daily transaction output and unit price are calculated not by one, but by tons. In Panyu, an ordinary wholesale store may have hundreds or even thousands of hard disks on average every day. According to this transaction volume, it is unlikely that they will use software to scan and repair hard disks at this time. At the same time, you may not know how they ship foreign second-hand computer spare parts or whole machine. I can give a brief description here. In developed countries, it is not allowed to drop obsolete computers into the garbage bins. If passers-by or neighbors see an alarm, they will be fined a lot. Therefore, companies and individuals who purchase second-hand computers or spare parts abroad do not have to pay any fees. On the contrary, companies and individuals who need to eliminate computers must pay a considerable fee to those who collect them, ask them to pull the computer away. Because of this, it can be said that receiving old computers abroad is a non-existent business, and the freight for each container is about 1000 US dollars (currently, foreign garbage imports are not allowed in the country, however, many second-hand computer spare parts can still come in. In addition, there are always many ways for sellers, and the import tax can also be escaped by filling in customs documents ), therefore, you cannot imagine the low purchase price in China. Hard drive wholesalers in China are all pulled back with a dump truck, and the whole car fell onto the ground. Because their wholesale prices are already very low, they don't care about the damage rate at all. They don't need to worry about the hard disk, which will lead to bad channels and deformation of the disk. They just need to ship the goods quickly and then purchase the goods quickly. Therefore, I can tell you responsibly that almost 100% of hard disks come in through such channels with one or more defects, if it is acquired from a local company or individual, it is another matter. Middlemen from all over the world will simply repair the wholesale hard disks before sending them to retail stores. As a result, we can know that most of the vendors who need such software are middlemen and retail merchants, they used a batch of second-hand hard disks at a relatively low price, but the volume of hard disks was not large every day. If they could block all bad sectors of the hard disk, they would have recovered to the absence of Bad Sectors, the retail price of the same hard disk can be increased by 50 to 100 yuan. These disks can also be used, but you need to decide whether to purchase and use them based on your actual use and importance of data. However, I believe that you can decide how to spend your money based on your actual needs.

By the way, some people may hesitate to buy a new hard drive because they are using old computer models and cannot identify large hard drives. So I can rest assured that no large hard drive Support Program from any hard drive manufacturer is required. If your motherboard BIOS is Award, you only need to download a small program called BP (full name: BIOS Patcher, you can modify the motherboard BIOS program error and enable the blocked function; currently, only Award BIOS is supported. : Http://rom.by/Award/patcher/bp-4rc_C.rar), suppose your motherboard BIOS file name is 1.bin, then you enter the command in pure DOS mode: bp 1.bin, and then brush this file back to the motherboard, everything is done. Now, no matter how old your motherboard is (or even the old Ben or VX motherboard), it can support a large hard disk of GB.

Goodbye to hard drive injury and soft injury-hard drive repair and data recovery Author: Zhiming

Has the software repaired the hard disk? The entire analysis of Hard Disk damage caused a lot of repercussions. I have collected and summarized some responses and opinions through various channels. Many consumers have heard of such things and insider information for the first time through this article, and I am very supportive of such articles. Of course, there are also some people in the industry to blame for the various reactions, and I think such an article is not good for the development of this industry. However, in any case, I believe that the growth of the hard drive and data industries is the biggest negative factor for the development of the hard drive and data industry. This gives you more information about this, in general, improving the recognition level of this industry is truly conducive to improving the level of hard drive maintenance and data recovery in China. It is based on this idea that this subsequent article is available. Because the object is still common DIYer and the majority of consumers, we still adopt a more popular narrative method, and try to avoid using too professional words and advanced so-called "theoretical knowledge ".

The specific structure and principle of the IDE hard disk and the SCSI hard disk are different. The SCSI hard disk is much more complex than the IDE hard disk. This article is only for the purpose of popularization. In order to briefly describe the topic, hard disks mentioned in this Article refer to IDE hard disks.

Hard Disk market reality

In the previous topic, I briefly described some knowledge and conditions of hard drive maintenance. It is necessary to give a more in-depth description of the hard drive industry and the market, in this way, readers can smoothly read and understand the subsequent sections.

There are 8 ~ Those who have been using computers for 10 years or even longer will have a profound experience? D? D. The hard disk quality is getting worse and worse. In retrospect, in the 600 MB, 1 GB, 1.2 GB, and GB era, the only disadvantage of many hard disks is that the capacity is not that large and the speed is not so fast; however, in actual use, the hard disks in many other aspects are better than the current hard disks. For example, the noise is very small, and you even need to stick your ears on the disk to hear the sound of Hard Disk rotation. The service life is long. A friend of mine has an original IBM 486DX33 computer, the MB hard disk in it is still in normal use, no noise, no bad channels, the seek time can still reach the nominal value, the performance has not been reduced; the disk quality is good, I put the hard disks that I can collect from MB to GB, and found that the vast majority of the hard disks are still shining, sturdy, without any oxidation, rust, and traces, starting from 3.2GB, the hard disk that has been used for more than 3 years has started to fade out, and can even make a sound. The circuit board is full of materials and there are two pictures below, seagate 3.2GB hard disk board is a large board, 15 GB of kunteng hard disk is a curve circuit board, compare the work of the Board and the above electronic components can explain the problem. Why is this happening?

Figure 1 Comparison of GB and 15 GB hard disk board shows that the quality of GB is much better.

Figure 2 Comparison of Seagate 1.2 GB, kunteng 15 GB, and West GB

There are many reasons for this, and it is impossible to elaborate in an article. For hard drive durability deterioration, manufacturers say that hard drive speed is accelerated, data density increases, power consumption increases, fever more, so the life is shortened. Media claims that the overall profit margin of the hard drive industry is declining and competition is becoming increasingly fierce. Hard drive manufacturers must take measures to effectively reduce product costs in order to enhance their competitiveness. These arguments have their own principles, but I don't want to discuss these common questions here today. I want to give an example of what I have personally experienced? D? D. This is only one of the few problems that hard drive providers face. Of course, it is not enough to constitute the reason why they take substantive actions. However, under the combined effects of multiple problems, the situation is different. I have an old beauty friend who doesn't have a name. I call him Dick for the moment and work at a hard drive manufacturer. One year when he took annual leave, he ran to Canada, forcing him to sleep for two days in my house. One day, he occasionally talked about the company's bad feelings. He immediately complained and said, "Jack (for the time being, I am calling myself). You Chinese have a headache for me ." I am very surprised to ask him why he said this. He explained it for a long time and I understood that the original hard drive rate of their company suddenly rose sharply in the Chinese market during that time, it puts a lot of pressure on the company's Quality Assurance Department, and the company's after-sales service costs greatly exceed the budget. The company immediately sent someone to learn about it and concluded that although the company was preparing to set up factories overseas and there were some adjustments in production, the quality of some models of products experienced slight fluctuations, however, this does not constitute the main reason for the sharp rise in the China market's return rate. The main reason is that they provide a three-year warranty. Many users know that there are some problems with some models of this brand in numerous promotions, so they will expand their goals to a full range of products, even if your hard disk has never been used, you still need to go to the dealer within two to two and a half years to change the disk. In order to achieve the purpose of return, many consumers use bad measures? D? D. Wrap the hard disk with a towel. After power-on, smash the hard disk to the desktop or press it with a hammer. Or use some self-written or ready-made mini programs to issue some commands, let the hard disk head shake back and forth frantically, in a short period of time lead to the head cantilever deformation and disk surface to generate physical strokes. It is precisely because of this that the return and repair rates of the company's products in the Chinese market have greatly increased (You know, generally, at that time, their hard disk repair rate was less than 1, even if it turns into 2‰, it has already exceeded many times, not to mention they were higher than this at the time ). The company asked him to study and solve this problem. After understanding and research, he knew that other companies are facing the same problem, but their company has a high market share in China, so the problem is more serious. He said that he could change the hard disk design, so that they can find out whether the hard disk is naturally damaged or abnormal when the hard disk is returned. However, the company does not care about this method, because this idea is good, but there is no practical feasibility? D? D. The return and replacement process is usually between the consumer and the dealer, and the dealer does not have such a verification method. It is too late when the hard disk is collected to the company. At the same time, even if the company knows the cause of Hard Disk damage, there is still no direct evidence to reject the replacement. Furthermore, even if there is evidence, it is still impossible to reject the after-sales service, so as not to be publicized by competitors, offending all consumers. He is angry for this reason!

Of course, we now know how hard drive manufacturers can solve this problem? D? D. Although taking such measures is also based on a global environment. At that time, the competition was fierce, and the hard disk profit margin continued to decline. If the manufacturer had to bear such heavy after-sales services at the same time, there would be no profit at all. So what are their solutions surprisingly consistent? D? D. reduce product costs and shorten the warranty period to maintain a considerable profit. Here, I don't know what to say. The selfish and bad behaviors of a few consumers have harmed the interests of all consumers. Most other law-abiding consumers will bury them with me. I am not here to encourage everyone to switch back, because this will only lead to a vicious circle in the market, and a few people will laugh at it as if it was cheap, but they eventually suffered the damage and lost others who did not. [Pophard: I hope everyone can abide by the game rules of this industry and make the market develop in a virtuous circle. Everyone can enjoy good after-sales services and use better products.

Of course, some vendors are too far away from the normal track in a bid to reduce costs. The most obvious problem is the processing of the servo port. Friends who are familiar with hard disks know that there is a hole on the hard disk, which is usually enclosed by aluminum stickers. Some even use metal clips to wrap the closed sticker to prevent it from being damaged, this is the servo port (some sales staff call it a vacuum seal, which is actually wrong. The hard disk is not a vacuum inside it, the head depends on the Air Cushion principle and is suspended above the disk to read data. The purpose of this seal is to prevent dust from entering the hard disk. Therefore, which of the following statements should be true? D? D ). Generally, the track structure of a disk is not carried out before assembly. We all know that 3 inch of disks need to store dozens of GB of data, and the track must be very fine-grained. If a track is constructed before assembly, as long as there is a very small error in the Assembly, the assembled hard disk may have one or more problems at work. At the same time, a slight collision may occur during the assembly process, resulting in bad sectors. If a track is constructed before the Assembly, it is impossible to find these bad sectors to shield them. The role of the servo port is that after the hard disk is assembled, the manipulator can scan and write the servo information from this hole to construct the track, you only need to scan and write the hard disk once to write the servo information, while ensuring the accuracy of the servo information and the reliability of the hard disk. The number of servo ports may be 1, 2, 3, or more. Single-Chip single-sided disks only require one servo port, two single-chip dual-sided disks, two dual-sided disks, and three dual-sided disks, and so on.

Figure 3 single-chip single-sided hard drive

Figure 4 single-chip dual-sided hard drive

Figure 5 dual-sided hard drive

Figure 6 Dual-sided hard drive

The servo port cannot be damaged. Once damaged, dust in the air will enter the hard disk. For a disk, a dust is equivalent to a bomb. Even if there is only one dust, on the high-speed rotating disc, the dust will jump and jump like a bullet ball, hitting the disc continuously, forming a large and small bad sector. Therefore, hard disk manufacturers will not repair such hard disks. As you can see, there will be such a description on the sticker of the servo port? D? DWarranty Void If Remove (once damaged, warranty is invalid ). However, it is precisely in this most important and fragile part of the disk that a hard drive vendor intentionally or unintentionally experienced a serious design error ., Some hard drive manufacturers are used to protect the materials of the servo port, except that there is not enough sag, A 15mm × 8mm small piece of paper with a thickness less than 1mm mm (it is really a piece of paper) to ensure the absolute dust-free working environment inside the hard disk )! The entire hard disk is decommissioned as long as a thin paper is accidentally scratched. People with a little DIY knowledge should know that it is normal to insert the hard disk into the hard disk rack during the hard disk installation process and there is a bit of friction between the side and the rack, in addition, this place is also the easiest place for fingers to stamp when taking the hard disk. If there is not enough sag and the paper is exposed to this position, it is just playing with fire. If a hard disk manufacturer refuses to provide three-pack services to its customers after the hard disk is decommissioned due to accidental scratches on the paper, it wants customers to pay for their design mistakes, that is indeed a little too much.

Figure 7. Insufficient protective servo ports for a hard drive of a certain brand

Figure 8 servo port of the IBM Hard Disk

Figure 9. Seagate hard drive servo port (the aluminum block above)

Figure 10. kunteng hard drive servo Port

Figure 11 western data hard drive servo Port

Figure 12. Servo port of the hard disk

It is precisely because of the manufacturer's pursuit of low costs that an industry that has been around for a long time but has not yet gained enough space for development has been expected for a long time. This is the hard drive service industry. If the hard disk can be used very stably for a long time, users do not need to repair it if it is not damaged. If it is used for year 67, even if it is broken, there is no need to repair it. But now the situation is a bit different. It is very common for many hard disks to break down shortly after the warranty period, I am afraid no one will be willing to buy a hard drive that costs one thousand or several hundred Yuan if it has been used for two years. This leads to market demand for hard drive repair.