Dolphin Data Lab has released the latest data recovery software V2.3 and this new software will help all DFL users repair firmware corruption and recover lost data from new Western Digital hard drives, for example the latest SMR hard drives with SED and MCU lock.
As for Western Digital hard drives, we have experienced the PCB series of 12XX, 14XX, 15XX, 16XX, 17XX, 18XX, 19xx, 800XX, 81XXX, etc. All users need to check the PCB number of the WD drives and then users can easily judge if the WD drives are supported or not.
For old WD hard drives, the firmware area is not locked, users can easily access and backup the firmware modules, if not, users can load loaders to access the firmware; for some common hard drives, users can disable 02 or disable 411 to access the firmware area; but for new WD SMR hard drives, users need to use firmware unlock PCB or create unlock rom to unlock firmware area.
For new WD SMR hard drives, Dolphin data recovery tools have many unique and powerful hdd repair and data recovery solutions: to fix the SMR HDD slow firmware issue; to fix SMR HDD all sectors 0000 firmware issue; to fix SMR HDD inaccessible data area issue.
For WD hard drives, users have the following options of firmware repair and data recovery:
1, Firmware module read and write;
2, Edit firmware modules;
3, Re-generate firmware modules;
4, Re-generate ROM;
5, Fix Slow issue;
6, Edit head map in RAM;
7, Test and clear firmware module;
8, Convert LBA to CHS;
9, Extract firmware modules from tracks;
10, Backup firmware region and extract firmware modules from region;
11, Change module size to read;
12, Change module location;
13, Bypass firmware read;
14, Disable module 02/411 to access firmware area;
15, Test heads quality;
16, etc;
More and more new WD hard drive data recovery cases are being fixed by Dolphin data recovery tools.
Any question is welcome to [email protected] or add Dolphin Skype ID: dolphin.data.lab
To work with Dolphin DFL data recovery tools, it’s very necessary to set one target disk whenever users are trying to read from the original hard drives. DFL-DDP data recovery tool has one unique and very helpful disk imaging feature and that is to record all read operations to the target disk and all read sectors within the data drive will not be read for a second time.
So how to set a target disk smartly?
Users can image to drive: image data drive to target drive connected to DFL data recovery hardware, for example, image from SATA 0 to SATA 1, SATA 2, etc; image data drive to target drive such as external hard drives connected to pc; Image data drive to VHD/VHDX target disk.
Here Dolphin engineers strongly recommend to use VHD/VHDX as target drives. Users can connect one SATA hard drive with big capacity, such as 10TB to pc by the Universal USB to SATA adapter Pro., and then users can create multiple VHD or VHDX drives on this SATA HDD, next users can image different data drive to different VHD or VHDX drives. All these VHD(X) drives are independent from each other.
Why do we use SATA drive and the adapter, because SATA drives are much cheaper than external hard drives and the adapter helps to make the SATA drives portable easily.
Any question is welcome to [email protected] or add Dolphin Skype ID: dolphin.data.lab
Dolphin team have created the latest software version 2.3 to work with DFL-URE, DFL-SRP and DFL PCIe data recovery hardware tools. All Dolphin users can download this software from the user-only forum here.
What’s New in DFL-DDP data recovery tool
Latest version: V2.3
190 repair manager which helps users to fix many 190 corrupted cases;
>Import Module 190 and Manage
>Extract the T2 Data(190 core nodes)
>Original Nodes List
>Scanned Nodes List
>List Nodes by Original Order
>List Nodes by Node Tree
>List Nodes by Start LBA
>SIT Repair
>Search Correct Blocks Auto
>Search and Replace
>Search Error Nodes
>Search Overlap Nodes
>TIS Check
>Vacant Nodes Count
>Overlap Nodes Count
>Tree Root Node Number Check
>Test Current Nodes
>Test All Nodes
>Test Tree
>Test Nodes by SMRZONE
>Scan Lost Nodes
>Repair Selected Nodes
>Delete Selected Nodes
>Delete Error Nodes
>Delete Nodes with Same Start LBA
>Delete Nodes with Same END LBA
>Repair Vacant Nodes with Scanned Nodes
>Caculate Valid Data from Selected Nodes
>Zerofill Bad Sectors within The Module
>Load 190/T2 auto for data recovery
Module 190/T2data auto loading; Without auto loading, many cases will fail because 190 loading to RAM may fail after power reset;
WD SMR HDD selective head image is running more smoothly;
New ZFS, BTRFS file systems support are added;
Non-Standard sector-sized HDD read and write is supported, for example sector size of 520B, 524B;
Time extraction from video streams for HKFS DVR is supported;
The new NTFS 4.0 is added to support;
WD SMR HDD TLER activation is added;
WD SMR HDD: change HDD configuration/WD slow fix, delete non-important firmware modules
Linux LVM file system support is added;
Block checksum algorithm for MDF fragmented file recovery is added;
Support now GPT with LDM volume;
Software interface optimization;
Toshiba selective head image algorithm optimization;
HKFS, NTFS, VMFS, Exfat file extraction optimization;
Other optimization
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What’s new in DFL WD hdd repair tool
Latest version: V2.990
Generate unlock rom with firmware unlock pcb, write unlock rom to original pcb to unlock fw;
Note: Unlock rom generation without firmware unlock pcb is available soon but 810035 unlock still requires special firmware unlock pcb, right now if users wish to unlock firmware without firmware unlock pcb, please email your rom to [email protected], we will generate unlock rom for users to write by HDD rom chip pin reader to unlock the firmware.
Read SMR Zone;
Read T2 Data;
Head map editing optimization: head number of 8 or above is supported.
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What’s new in DFL Seagate HDD repair tool
Latest version: V4.210
More new Rosewood 8C models are supported;
ROM editing optimization；
B2 HDD Data Corruption Repair is added (ST4000VX005、ST4000VM004);
ROM read/write is further enhanced;
ID editing by COM is optimized;
SYS read by ABA is added;
A-list regeneration is added;
NGlist regeneration is added;
Seagate New ST8000NM000A 8TB B5 Cimarron family firmware unlock solution is completed but coming soon in newer software upgrade;
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What’s new in DFL Samsung HDD Repair Tool
Latest version: V2.000
Head map editing is added;
ROM read and write for M024, M9T, m6s, m40s, t166 is added;
Samsung old hdd password removal has been added to support;
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What’s new in DFL Toshiba/Fujitsu hdd repair tool
Latest version: V1.600
MQ03ABB fw read/write support;
Cut zone optimization;
Standard capacity selection is added when editing ID;
46GSX family support is added;
MQ01(4K) G to P is added to support.
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What’s new in DFL Hitachi/IBM hdd repair tool
Latest version: V1.400
To save NVRAM and ROM by SN is added;
Boot remove password is added;
7210CLA3 support is added;
Any question is welcome to [email protected] or add Dolphin Skype ID: dolphin.data.lab
It is now possible for DFL users to unlock the WD SMR HDDs firmware area on the original PCB without special firmware unlock PCBs.
The new solution for WD SMR HDD firmware unlock is available within DFL-WD hdd repair tool and to use this solution, users need to have DFL HDD ROM chip pin reader(Many users have already had this one.) and the steps are as below:
1, Remove the original PCB from data drive;
2, Read the original ROM from original PCB by the HDD rom chip pin reader set without soldering rom chip off;
3, Generate firmware unlock ROM;
4, Write unlock rom to original PCB by the HDD rom chip pin reader set without soldering rom chip off;
5, Install the original PCB to data drive and users can see the firmware area is already unlocked successfully;
6, Users can use DFL-WD hdd repair tool to backup important firmware modules, specially the module 190, smrzone, T2data, etc;
7, Users can image the HDD or extract lost data directly if users have DFL-URE or DFL-UREP by using DFL latest T2 auto loading tech;
8, If the original PCB is physically damagaed but the Main chip and ROM chip are still good, users can use the special firmware unlock PCB and then move the original main chip to the firmware unlock SATA PCB and write original ROM to the firmware unlock PCB for disk imaging or file extraction;
9, In some cases, users need to repair the damaged firmware module 190 or repair the SMR HDD slow issue to continue for data recovery.
The WD SMR HDD firmware repair and data recovery solution is more and more complete and successful and DFL users will be able to fix more and more new data recovery cases.
Please note: the new solution supports 800066, 67, 69, 77, 11, etc but doesn’t support 810033 and 810035 which have quite different rom structure and algorithms. For WD 810033 and 810035, users still need to get the special firmware unlock PCBs for firmware unlock.
Any question is welcome to [email protected] or add Dolphin Skype ID: dolphin.data.lab
This is one patient WD SMR Charger HDD from one DFL user in China who has other data recovery tools but failed to get the lost data back due to the 190 loading issue.
HDD ID:
WD20SDRW-11VUUS0
Family: Charger
4 Heads
Microcode: 6008J
SPT: 1860
This DFL user contacted Dolphin team and bought DFL PCIe data recovery express recharge version and DFL-URE Plus and applied for remote support.
By DFL PCIe data recovery express, the user had safely backup the rom and firmware modules and tested the firmware modules and found the modules 189 and 190 are corrupted with checksum errors. At this time, the engineer had to backup the 190 by ATA but still some sectors failed to be read in module 190. The engineer repaired the module 190 by DFL-WD 190 repair solution and got new 190 and at the same time, the T2 data was extracted as one important part of 190.
By DFL-URE Plus, the engineer could connect the Charger USB HDD directly, before loading T2Data, all sectors were found as 0, next the engineer selected the menu ‘Edit Head Map in RAM and Load T2’ and the engineer loaded the T2 data automatically.
After T2 auto loading after power reset, the engineer went to check data area again and the hex data becomes normal.
Next the engineer went to file extraction and the lost partition, folders and files were perfectly listed and finally all lost data was recovered.
Watch the video here on How to use DFL URE UREP to Recover Lost Data Easily from WD SMR HDDs Suffering All Sectors Zero:
Any question is welcome to [email protected] or add Dolphin Skype ID: dolphin.data.lab
Slow problem is very common firmware failure in western Digital hard drives, it is also the same situation for WD SMR hard drives. But please note: Slow issue can also be caused by physical weak head or weak platter surface. It’s not possible before to fix the SMR HDD slow issue by the traditional ‘slow fix’ solution.
Within the latest DFL all in one data recovery tool V2.3, users can easily fix the slow issue without affecting the data and the solution has helped many DFL users to get lost data back from the WD SMR HDDs.
The WD SMR HDD slow fix solution is available within DFL-DDP data recovery software.
All users need to do is to activate TLER, click to modify module 01 and 02 and input the read and write response time.
But if the slow issue is caused by weak heads or downgraded surfaces, users need to backup the SMRzone and module 190/T2 for running selective head image.
Any question is welcome to [email protected] or add Dolphin Skype ID: dolphin.data.lab
