My Hard Drive Died #12 – Seagate HAMR, Flash Memory, File Systems

My Hard Drive Died - Podnutz

Hosted by Steve Cherubino and Scott Moulton of MyHardDriveDied.com.

TOPICS DISCUSSED

Scott on an international traveling schedule (Spain, France, United Kingdom, Scotland).

Visiting Spain, testifying in a forensic case. International laws are extremely different compared to US laws.
Spain is under a Napoleonic code, if you lie you simply go to jail.
Not being able to speak Spanish required a translator and in a technical case this is not fun.

Seagate HAMR Drives
Seagate successfully demos Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technology.

HAMR aims to increase areal density by more than 100 times.

Technology could store up to 50 terabits of data per square inch.
It pushes the limits of magnetic recording.

It records data magnetically on high-stability media using laser thermal assistance.

DEF CON 18
Las Vegas (July 29th – August 1^st 2010)

NAND Flash Memory

Seagate drives adding 4GB NAND flash memory to the board

exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table)
Is a proprietary file system introduced by Microsoft (Windows Embedded CE 6.0, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008).

JFFS (Journaling Flash File System)

Is a log-structured file system for use on NOR flash memory devices on the Linux operating system. It has been superseded by JFFS2.

HFS (Hierarchical File System)

Is a file system developed by Apple Inc. for use in computer systems running Mac OS.

HPFS (High Performance File System)
Is a file system created specifically for the OS/2 operating system to improve upon the limitations of the FAT file system.

Racetrack memory is an IBM project led by physicist Stuart Parkin.
GMR heads available on all current drives were originally designed by him.

EMAIL QUESTIONS

Luis
Q: Do you have a recommendation for a DOD hard disk repair station?
A: Some of the tools I use is what I believe the DOD may be looking at:

DeepSpar Disk Imager (DeepSpar Data Recovery Systems)

Allows imaging data for selected types of files and directories

PC3000 is the premier data recovery tool accessing hard disk drives at a firmware level

Ben (Check his podcast at Qetuo)

Q: Please explain de difference between a PRIMARY and EXTENDED hard drive partition in windows and is there a difference when recovering files?

A: There is indeed a difference when recovering files. With the current MBR (Master Boot Record) you can only have 4 possible partitions.

Primary simply means I can boot from it. You can have 3 primary partitions and 1 extended partition. Extended means I have a partition inside a primary partition.

Partitions are extremely important during the recovery process.

Ben

Q: Should you replace a 9 year old drive with 5 power on years?

A: As drives age, the lubrication and fundamental components start to deteriorate. Make sure you run a full backup on a drive before replacing it.
Western Digital and Seagate drives are the two primary selling drives and more failures are expected (common boards and head assembly problems).

Hitachi drives run well but when physical damage is present, heads tend to fail and scratch the platter.

Harun (Manchester, UK)

Q: SMART is not a reliable indicator of a hard drive health, what can be used instead?

A: There is really nothing out there. Simply said, there is no way to tell when your hard drive is going to die.
MHDD will give you a count of bad sectors only; it will give you a good idea on the conditions of the drive.

Roger

Q: Are the Western Digital “Black” drives worth the price premium and what are the main differences of those drives compared to the Western Digital “Blue” drives?

I know the black drives offer longer warranty but I’m wondering if they are built different or with better parts.

A: Typically GREEN means cheapest, BLUE is the mid line range, and BLACK is the more expensive and yes built with better components and higher speeds.

It is worth the price if you’re concerned about speed, not reliability. Survival rate may not be good because of their high speed and how hot they get.

Steve Damico

Q: Is it smart to store an external Western Digital drive inside a safe in a garage (New York area, cold winters).
A: Temperature greatly affects, metal contracts when it’s cold and it can cause a severe death. It is recommended to wait at least 24 hours before the drive adapts itself to inside temperatures, then maybe it will work OK and no harm will be caused.

ISD (InfoSec Daily)

Matthew Shoemaker left us on Friday, July 30, 2010.

Matthew M. Shoemaker (1973-2010)

The Shoemaker Memorial Care Fund has been established to provide for his children at The Peoples Bank, P.O. Box 788, Winder, GA 30680.

Make a Donation to Matthew Shoemaker Memorial Fund via PayPal also.

Next Data Recovery Classes
Las Vegas Sept 20^th – 24^th 2010
Dallas Oct 11^th – 15^th 2010

Washington DC Dec 6^th – 10^th 2010

Notes by Jorge Hernandez of 123ComputerRepair.com