Hi Everyone,

I have a question and i dont really know how to ask it so here goes. I am after a board caple of doing low level tasks on a hard drive. The problem is i need a board to develop and practice on but dont know what will be best. I need some sort of board that is capable of taking input in the form of a sata/ide input and then outputing in the same format, is that possible ?

Any information or links to microcontroller boards would be very useful

Kind regards and thanks for your help

Jonathan

 

Can you define "low level"? Do you mean to make a board that duplicates the function of the controller already on a hard drive, or do you mean to organize data on a hard drive with a self-written DOS?

SATA and IDE interfaces are really different - you might wish to select one or the other.

 

Hi,

Thanks for the reply, ideally i would like to be able to allow data to flow through my device while performing functions on the data such as counting the bytes passed through and information like that. I would also like to be able to perform tasks on the hardware of the drive if possible.

I am happy to take recommendations on boards for both sata and ide interfaces as it will have work with both, but as seperate entities not on the same board

Thanks for you help and adivce

Regards

Jonathan

 

If you need to low level tasks on IDE hard drives you are probably better off
getting a simple motherboard and doing an adapter board that enables you to easliy
connect and disconnect drives. It would be a lot faster and cheaper than doing a uC development board.

(* jcl *)

 

If you are going to perform functions as data flows through the board, calculate the transfer rate for the fastest hard drive you are going to use, and search for an SBC that executes instructions fast enough to keep up.

If you are going to be running the hard drive hardware, then you will have to get pretty lucky. That data may fall under proprietary IP of each manufacturer. You should be able to get a list of commands to position the heads and so on.

 

Thanks for the replies. I must say a lot of that has unfortunately gone over my head as i am very new to electronics and microcontrollers. If possible i would like to use a ready made board as my skills lie in programming rather than the electronic part of things.


I guess i need to do a lot of reading to get up to scratch still, but if you could roughly point out what sort of kit i would need to buy to create an interface to allow data to flow through a component with the ability to read the amount of bites i would be extremely grateful

Thanks for all your help

Regards

Jonathan

 

There is no point in selecting an SBC or microprocessor until you know what it will have to do. This link should give you a starting point.

 

Thanks for the advice and link, i know what i want to be able to do but the idea i have, has been a long work in progress and i am a bit dubious about posting it on the forums for all to see at the moment. I really appreciate your help and i will try to explain as best i can when i get any closer to understanding what i need to do

Regards

Jonathan

 

Are you thinking of something like this?

http://www.getcatalyst.com/product-storage_ata.html
http://www.getcatalyst.com/images/products/storage_ata_ide.jpg

It might be possible obtain the API for that device and use your software with the pod. Or failing that... there are ways to find out how to talk to the API.

I'm sure that is not the only device of this kind. Google is your friend.

Another example:

http://www.protocoltools.com/protocols/ata/

 

Hi

Yeah that exactly what i am looking to develop, not for the same function but something enitrely different, I am very interested in the second link you posted showing the 2.5 inch version as i would like to create this for a mobile market.

I have bought a couple of books to read etc but if anyone has any further ideas on how to replicate the internals of those devices i would be grateful.

Thanks for all your help so far

 

I would think that the easiest way to implement those pods are using FPGAs instead of microprocessors/controllers. There are cores available for PATA and SATA interfaces and it would be relatively straightforward to tap into the data or insert commands, etc.

The standards are pretty well defined.