PicoBot

Hi everybody, my question is inspired by the following idea: When completly defragmenting a HDD ( e.g. called SmartPlacement by PerfectDisk ), it is often neccessary to "move out" files to make free space and then "move in" these files later. Especially on big HDDs with several TB capacity, the defragmentation process will be severly slowed down by this step, since the r/w heads have to travel in and out very often. Therefore my idea is: Imagine that you have one HDD which is heavily filled and fragmented, and a second HDD of identical size and geometry, which is totally empty. Now both HDD are taken offline at first, to prevent any changes during the defragmentation process. In a second step, all files on the first HDD are analyzed to make a detailed layout plan, where those files, directory stuctures and metadata have to be placed on the second HDD to achieve an exact, but already defragmented copy of the first HDD. And in a third step, the data is copied to the second HDD according to the layout plan. Of course such a hypothetical program would need very detailed knowledge about the file system which should be reorganized. My idea is that this method would speed up the defragmentation process a lot, because it can read from the first HDD and write to the second HDD at the same time. The second advantage would be, that such a program would need much less movement of the r/w heads, which also significantly should speed up the defragmentation. Has anybody of you ever heard that such a type of defragmentation program is in development ? C.U. Picobot

Hi, I am just dropping in to report that the installation of XP from an ISO, where both the mass storage drivers needed by the mobo and firadisk have been integrated using nlite, works fine. I built a XP ISO with drivers for all types of Intels ICH7(x) to ICH10(x) controller ( both raid and ahci drivers ), NVidias Nforce7 chipset ( raid and ahci ) and firadisk itself. Then I used the following configuration ( winsetup.lst ) for grub4dos: title First part of Windows XP setup from ISO map --mem (md)0x800+4 (99) map /XP.iso (0xff) checkrange 0x80 read 0x8280 && map (hd0) (hd1) checkrange 0x80 read 0x8280 && map (hd1) (hd0) map --hook write (99) [FiraDisk]\nStartOptions=cdrom,vmem=find:/XP.iso;\n\0 chainloader (0xff) title Second part of XP setup from ISO / Boot first internal hard drive map --mem (md)0x800+4 (99) checkrange 0x80 read 0x8280 && map (hd0) (hd1) checkrange 0x80 read 0x8280 && map (hd1) (hd0) map --hook write (99) [FiraDisk]\nStartOptions=cdrom,vmem=find:/XP.iso;\n\0 chainloader (hd0)+1 The HDD for the installation was NOT connected via USB, because my mobo ( GA-P35DS3R rev. 1.0 ) only boots from USB in 1.1 mode and "Plops" USB driver did not work for me. Instead, the installation HDD was connected to the 4. S-ATA Port of the ICH9R, and the target HDD was on the 1. S-ATA port. Then I booted the installation HDD via the boot menu of the bios, which explains the mappings I needed in the winsetup.lst . I never installed a Windows XP so fast, even it could have been faster, since the installation HDD was only a 2,5" drive with 5400 rpm, which normally belongs into an external USB enclosure. Of course this method should work the same way if the installation HDD would have been booted through USB, but I did not test this since it would have been painfully slow with my mobo. C.U. Picobot

Well, forcing the drive to download the CC46 firmware without any further investigation of course would not be wise, especially since the drive works without any problems. To find out the reason for the update failure, the solution would be to build a serial cable and to check the version of the firmware modules via serial communication. And this IMHO is not worth the time and effort at all, so the drive will continue to work with CC31. C.U. PicoBot

Hi jaclaz, thanks for the link to the older firmware version. I was also able to find the CC3D version: http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/downloads/firmware/Barracuda12-ALL-CC3D.iso Nevertheless, both versions are not willing / able to update this specific drive. The only progress I made is that I have written down the exact error messages: "Modell matched, no firmware match, will not download firmware" and "Modell matched but firmware version is not compatible" I am beginning to believe that there really is a small difference in the hardware and therefore the newer firmwares must not be used with this drive. So my hope is, that the newer firmware is not such important and there are no "hidden" bugs like there where in the 7200.11 firmware C.U. PicoBot

Hi everybody, two days ago a friend of mine informed me that the CC46 firmware update for most of the 7200.12 drives is available at seagate's website. I downloaded and burned the CD ISO image and was able to update six of my seven 7200.12 drives. These drives are five ST31000528AS, originally equipped with CC34 and the CC37 firmwares, and one ST3500418AS, which originally had the CC38 firmware. With these six drives everything went fine, no problems at all. But one of my drives, a ST3500410AS, which currently works with the CC31 firmware, can't be updated at all. The updater reports that the updater is ok for this modell, but the firmware the drive has now ( CC31 ) and the new firmware ( CC46 ) are not "compatible" ( sorry, i can't remember the exact error report now ) and therefore rejects to update this drive. Is anybody of you aware of this problem and has informations about the reason for this behavior ? I can imagine three possible reasons: 1. This drive is one of the first exemplars of this drive, which has been sold, and is a little bit different in hardware. That would explain, why the CC46 firmware must not be used with the drive. 2. The firmware updater from seagate simply is not aware that there are drives with the firmware version CC31 and therefore "thinks" that the CC46 should better not be used with my drive 3. The version jump from CC31 to CC46 is too big and some of the internal data structures have been changed. Perhaps an "intermediate" update from CC31 to CC34 and then a second update from CC34 to CC46 might work, but i can't find any older firmware updates for this drive. Is anybody of you able to tell me if and which of my guesses is correct ? Thx for reading, PicoBot