SalvationDATA Releases Now New Version 1.4 of HD Doctor For Toshiba

SalvationDATA today upgraded its HD Doctor for Toshiba to Version 1.4 and it’s now available for users all over the world to get this upgrade for free from the official forum.

Release Date: June 3, 2011
Update Version: v1.4

1: Update Background

SalvationDATA will release update of HD Doctor for Toshiba supporting firmware (CP) reading/writing for all SATA drives. As nowadays all hard drives shipped by Toshiba are equipped with SATA interface, the update would support all hard drives with SATA interface in current market. This will definitely promote research on drive repair and data recovery for Toshiba hard drive.

Research on Toshiba has always been limited due to limit public material about Toshiba hard drive. Although there are professional tools in the industry, i.e. HD Doctor for Toshiba by SalvationDATA, the features are very limited with only password removal, clearing G-List and regenerate translator, reset S.M.A.R.T etc. Moreover, there are also tools which can read/write firmware (CP), but it’s very slow to read and write causing a greatly reduced quality in practical usage.

What’s the difference in firmware design between Toshiba hard drive and other brand of hard drive? Why do the current tools read/write firmware very slow? We are about to explain it. It’s known that firmware is divided into two portions: one small portion of boot code and configuration data is stored in ROM chip on PCB, while the other main partition of firmware modules are stored in service area on disk platter. After HDD power on, Micro-controller chip loads ROM boot code and boot code will read and load disk firmware. Such design can store only small portion of firmware on PCB reducing cost on chips.

Most of HDD manufacturers follow such firmware design, but Toshiba does exactly opposite storing main portion of firmware on PCB and small portion on disk platter (S.M.A.R.T modules etc). Firmware stored on PCB is also known as Configuration Page (CP), which contains unique modules such as P-List and adaptive parameters etc; firmware stored on disk platter contains modules which need to update frequently, such as S.M.A.R.T, G-List etc. Such firmware design can promote load speed of firmware after power on, but it also causes problem for HDD repair and data recovery. The existence of CP disallow PCB swap for Toshiba HDD, as similar to NV-RAM in Hitachi HDD, CP is unique for each individual Toshiba drive.

There are two channels accessing CP: COM port and IDE/SATA interface. Generally all HDD are designed with both COM port and IDE/SATA interface, and theoretically both channels can transfer data. Most of manufacturers use IDE/SATA to access firmware modules due to faster speed, while some manufacturers also use COM port to access firmware such as Seagate and Toshiba. Data transfer speed via COM port is limited to baud rate: higher baud rate, faster data transfer speed. Seagate HDD allows change of baud rate, so it will not be slow to read/write firmware via COM port; while Toshiba HDD disallows change of baud rate causing firmware reading/writing via COM port very slow. Sometime, you may need a whole day to read all of CP, which will definitely reduce efficiency in data recovery.

To overcome current shortage on firmware reading/writing for Toshiba HDD, SalvationDATA will is now releasing update to support firmware reading/writing via SATA interface, which will dramatically promote reading/writing speed of firmware (CP) for Toshiba SATA drives.

2. Added Features

a: Firmware reading/writing for HDD equipped with SATA interface.

As all HDD equipped with IDE interface are old drives and Toshiba now only produces SATA drives, the update can supports most of HDDs in the market. Attention, Toshiba implements very strict checksum for firmware modules and it will be locked if any verification on module checksum is detected after firmware recording.

b: HDD Configuration

The feature allows users to modify Model, Serial Number and LBA. However, we found that there are two families which cannot support modification of Serial Number: 59GSX” and “65GSX”. Once users modify serial number on these two families, the drives will be locked. The mechanism is unknown at present and corresponding research is under-going.

To learn more about the upgrade or if you are interested in more about our other hdd repair tools, you can check our data recovery tools portfolio or email to info@salvationdata.com.