Data Recovery Forums - Help & Discussions

salvationdataselina · Joined: 09 May 2008 Posts: 7 Location: China

In January 17, 2009, SalvationDATA Technology, the leading solution provider of data recovery products and services, announced its pioneered technology breakthrough which enables data recovery from Seagate HDD with F Level problem; this is a critical step forward for data recovery industry.

The Difficulty: Data recovery from Seagate HDD working in F Level
The issue of “F Level” is a common problem in HDD repair and data recovery of Seagate HDD. Then, what is “F Level”? Vender commands of Seagate HDD are grouped into different levels for the purpose of convenient management. F Level means that the HDD works only with PCB (Printed Circuit Board), which is independent from HDA (Head and Disk Assembly) case.

F Level issue only happens in Barracuda V and latter HDDs. As in former HDD, the controller system is rather simple, so it required small size firmware code, which generally is stored in ROM chip on PCB, so F Level will not exist. However, the code set has become larger and larger since Barracuda V and it can’t be completely stored in ROM chip any more. In the other hand, manufacturer doesn’t want to increase product cost by enlarging the ROM chip capacity, so the code set is divided and stored in both the disk surface and ROM chip. If disk firmware can’t be loaded during initialization after power-up, the HDD will work only in PCB mode, that’s when the F Level shows up.

Causes of F Level includes: damaged head, physical bad sectors in service area, scratches on disk surface, error loading from PCB, incorrect firmware location, firmware error, etc.; all of these will cause HDD to work in F Level.

The Breakthrough: Data Recovery Solution for F Level HDD from SalvationDATA
F Level issue in Barracuda 7200.7, Barracuda 7200.8, Barracuda 7200.9 and Barracuda 7200.10 has always been a big problem plaguing data recovery companies. For Barracuda 7200.7, data recovery engineer generally takes HOT SWAP PCB for trial and error to recover data from HDD working in F Level, which is proved to be working in some cases. But it doesn’t work for latter HDDs like Barracuda 7200.8, 7200.9 and 7200.10. This is because the latter HDDs are designed on different architecture with a big change in service area and HOT SWAP fails.

As there are various causes of F Level problem, it increases the difficulty of data recovery from F Level HDD. However, now SalvationDATA has worked out the key technology which enables the data recovery from F Level HDD, and the complete solution will be released as an upgrade to HD Doctor for Seagate in the near future, and of course it will be free of charge for all our customers as usual.

In this information age, more and more companies and individuals begin to understand the importance of data recovery industry. As one of the biggest data recovery R&D companies, SalvationDATA is engaged in technology research of data security and recovery, with 8 years efforts, SalvationDATA has provided tens of unique achievements in data recovery applications, and save countless value loss for customers.

The way forward mission for SalvationDATA is to solve data recovery problems, focus on research from damaged drive data recovery, develop more convenient data recovery solutions to satisfy the global increasing data recovery needs and protect computer users’ legal security rights.

More detailed information and the process of this technology, please kindly contact:　selina@salvationdata.com ( Email/MSN)
Regards Very Happy

Selina