I've been analyzing and reverse engineering harddrive firmware recently. I haven't had enough samples yet for a good scope of research. The firmware update utilities for HDDs have usually been very well thought out and implemented. Updates for a SSD's firmware can be easy or not worth the trouble.
I haven't had time to document the work due to two SSDs that have been troublesome. The SSDs are the same brand with the same MCU. When they were new, they were tested and grouped in the Pre Fail category. From a cold boot the recorded temperature of the SSDs was 100C.
Hopefully I will have something better in the near future. Remember to make backups.
@AmpBenzScientist
Interesting rev track. Buddy o mine was working on tekknos/prodz for emergency data retrievals after drive failures. Could Your work be of interest to him?
@PawelK It might be as the MCUs I'm focusing on are some of the most hated on the market currently. When they fail, recovery isn't an option on all models. I'll see what I can do.
@AmpBenzScientist
kewl. If I know what specific MCU or family that is and whaddya can get, we could try to chase the demand.
@PawelK Phison s11 series, the proletariat's controller. I should have everything I need to dig in deeper. My preferred goal is to bypass the checks and use an open source firmware on this platform.
It will take time to do this. The basic information is public knowledge. The controller maps the flash out and keeps firmware, or at least a large part of it, on the flash. Nearly everything is documented online but it's not going to be trivially easy to do.
