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When you are going to use PC3k in its command mode to repair Segate hard drives, you need to find the following information useful to indentify the parameters for SA objects.

Information in this section is necessary when automatic identification of locations during loader creation fails ; it can be used to determine the coordinates of objects for manually specified surface reading if you have to work with a HDD from a currently unsupported drive family using known and supported procedure of data reading from disk surface.

To identify the parameters of drive startup, you have to switch the level of logging for execution of commands
performed by the HDD. The task can be accomplished by pressing the [Ctrl]+[N] or [Ctrl]+[D] key combinations. The
drive at that will output the following (or similar) lines:
e c  r
x x x
Parameter identification requires switching the drive to x x x = 0 1 0. The drive in that case will report about each
subprogram it executes and parameters thereof.

ATTENTION! After procedure completion you have to return the drive to the x x x = 0 0 0 status by pressing the same keys!

While processing the terminal commands, the drive will output the following (or similar) messages:
cmd  58,  params  0047 0000 0000 03B4 3C0C 03B4 0000 0000 DAAA 0001 0047

Elements of the string above are explained as follows:
1                  2             3            4          5           6          7          8          9         10         11         12          13
cmd  58, params  0047  0000    0000  03B4       3C0C  03B4   0000   0000   DAAA    0001    0047

1 – running subprogram (in the above example represented by the command to read disk surface in 7200.7 PUMA
drive) (Subprogram numbers do not have to be identical in different drive families!);
3 – track number offset relatively to the SA base track (track index);
ATTENTION! Consider drive family specific features when calculating the cylinder number. E.g., in 7200.8 Tonka
and some other drives the track index should be multiplied by 2 before its addition to the SA base cylinder. Therefore, you should check first family-specific information.

5 – initial sector;
6 – the number of sectors, which will be read.
ATTENTION! The parameter may exceed SPT on SA tracks. In that case, the drive will continue reading either the
next cylinder or start using the next head. You can identify possible data continuation by a command to HDD to read
two sectors beginning with the last sector of the first track. The HDD will automatically go to the next track and you
will be able to use the “.” command to find its number.
7 – first buffer of the destination data area, where the reading will be performed to;
8 – the number of sectors, which will be copied to the zone defined by the parameter 7;

Besides, you are going to need reports decrypted by pressing the “ . ” and “ ` ” buttons.

Note. Some drive families support the command for output of the SA map (“y” on level “T”). To run the command,
CERT must be loaded (that is arranged automatically in the user commands menu).

Further we shall discuss the procedures for obtaining the parameters of individual SA objects.

For Seagate hard drive repair and data recovery, we have so far used tools such as PC3k UDMA and HD Doctor for Seagate.

More HDD repair tools or data recovery tools here

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