Skip to main content

Seagate with locked firmware


MjM Data Recovery are now able to unlock firmware on the new Grenada and Lombard series of drives.

When repairing a hard disk prior to recovery it is important to be able to examine and repair bad modules and tables within the firmware of the hard disk.

When firmware problems started appearing in about 2006/2007 the firmware zone on the drive was fully accessible using a TTL terminal adapter to manipulate the firmware, turn features on or off to improve the readability and reset and rebuild corrupt or damaged sections of the firmware.

If this repair can not take place, then the data is not recoverable. With the later Grenada and Lombard drives (the ones with a corner cut-out on the PCB) the firmware is either restricted or entirely locked down - especially on the SES series of Grenada.

We are now in a situation where we can remove these locks temporarily and make a clone of the data. We recently recovered 2 drives from a RAID 5 array where the problem was exacerbated by needing a head swap on one drive and the other had a serious firmware problem in SMART logs.

Attempting to access the firmware on these drives using standard methods resulted with 'Terminal Locked' messages. But once the drives were unlocked using the new technique, we could access the entire firmware zone, make a backup of all ROM, modules and system files, repair them and reload. Once this was done the data became accessible again.

We now offer this service directly to end users and to other Data Recovery companies.

details: https://www.mjm.co.uk/data-recovery-research/seagate-with-locked-firmware.html







Comments

Post a Comment

Please leave a comment on this data recovery blog

Popular posts from this blog

Slow Reponding Toshiba Drives

Toshiba Laptop Data Recovery Some problems have been found with Toshiba Laptop drives where the computer will fail with any of the following symptoms .. The drive hangs during boot Unable to access data Computer is very slow Problem with Drives We found the problem which is related to the G-List ( Grown defect list )it either becomes corrupt or is not readable. If it is not readable by the drive then the correct translator algorithms can not be run and so the drive slows down or even stops completely. Solution to Toshiba Hard Disk Problem. The solution is very complex and requires specialist equipment to enable rebuilding of the defect maps externally to the drive. However, once this is achieved the data can be accessed and a near perfect recovery is possible. For more information on this problem please visit our Toshiba Data Recovery pages.
Post a Comment
Read more

Hard Disk Recovery

Data recovery from hard disk drives is one of the most technically advanced operations performed by computer data recovery engineers. Much of the work involves highly skilled engineers that have engineering knowledge of how a hard disk functions. Not only mechanically, but electronically and logically. There are many situations where an engineer will examine a hard disk then find it has to be completely disassembled and rebuilt with new parts to replace the worn parts. This involves opening the drive in a clean room environment. Some drives suffer from Firmware corruption so the engineer will need to know how the individual manufacturer (and in many cases specific model ranges) store the firmware on the drive. In most cases this area is not accessible to the end-user so specialist equipment is needed to access the firmware on hard disks. Also, a drive may be suffering from an electronics problem which will require specialist techniques as many modern hard disks use unique ROM co...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fake Memory Cards

Fake Memory Cards. After seeing countless fake memory cards received for data recovery, we decided to write some software to help users determine if they have a fake memory or genuine memory card. The problem with the fakes is that they are so good, they actually appear to have the advertised storage space and it even seems that the full amount of data can be written. The only problem, is that the data overwrites some of the existing data rendering the older data useless. Our experiments indicate that (at least with the devices we tested) that the files and folder structures seem to be OK as they list as expected. The problem comes when the memory reaches its true physical limit. At that time, the data starts overwriting at the end of the card. As the file system information is updated, as normal there is no way of knowing, until you open a file that has been overwritten. It has gone, and unfortunately is most likely not recoverable.  Of course there will be exceptions to thi...
Post a Comment
Read more