victoria hdd/ssd repair: what is the difference between "DDD (API)" vs "wr LBA num" in write mode

Question

Does anyone know what the "DDD (API)" vs "wr LBA num" option is for in Victoria's "write" mode?

what is the difference between both?

thanks

Answer 1

1. The Write + DDD mode is "Data Distortion Detection". Victoria writes AA 55 AA 55 AA 55 pattern to a block (a number of sectors), and then immediately reads it (warning user if the read operation returned something else).

   • The author explained it here.
   • This mode works notably slower that regular Read / Write modes (~70MBps max vs ~300MBps, for example).
   • Some web sites (examples: 1, 2) incorrectly claim that this mode overwrites the data several time or somehow otherwise makes sure that the preexisting data is "better destroyed" than with the normal Write mode.

2. The Write + wr LBA num writes some "unique" piece of information to the very beginning of each sector (the rest is still a simple 00 00 00 00 00 00 pattern)

   • This mode could be potentially used to override some simple deduplication algorithms that are built into some SSDs, like Phison SmartZIP. However, the data being written is still easily compressible and contains a lot of plain zeros, so some other controllers (e.g. with Kingston DuraWrite) would not be fooled by it.
   • One can use the "Disk Editor" built into Vicroria 5.37 to check the actual contents of the sector:

3. The Verify mode, btw, asks your disk to read sectors, but the data is not transferred to the host (unlike the regular Read mode)
   • This mode does NOT check the contents of the data anyhow (except for the disk's internal checksumming).
   • Some web sites incorrectly claim that this mode first writes and than reads some data.
   • This mode is known to not work correctly on some disks (e.g. some SSDs).
   • This mode could be useful if you're limited by your SATA/SAS/IDE/USB/etc. interface bandwidth).