Once the master password is set it needs to be reentered on secure erase dialog screen. This is because the procedure can also be used to unlock ATA drives with unknown user password but known master password. Some manufacturers have predefined master passwords that will work with secure erase if master password was not modified before.

If you decide to run secure erase with user password. A temporary user password with high security level will be set. This password is ‘ABCDEF’. In case the procedure fails DRevitalize will try to automatically remove this password. However in case of loss of power it is impossible. The user will have to remove this password manually on next power up.

Please note that laptops/notebooks use a different ATA password system than the clean one used in DRevitalize. It is not possible to start a laptop with a drive on which the password was set by DRevitalize. If the user wants a password protected hard drive, he/she needs to set the ATA drive password either in the BIOS or in the specific laptop manufacturer utility. If the laptop is unable to start because of a failed ATA secure erase procedure, the only way to unlock the drive is to remove the drive from the laptop and connect it to a desktop PC or another laptop via USB and run DRevitalize specifying the required security options. Please note that only the Windows version is able to work with drives connected via USB.

The ATA security state command displays the current security information about the drive. If the drive is unlocked and a password has been set on it, the system will ask if the user wants to disable the password. Alternatively, the user has the option to enter security frozen mode if no password is set and security is open.

The default limit value for SLOW counter can be altered with a user defined number for access time when revitalizing slow sectors. When the user specifies 100ms for multi sector scan mode with revitalize slow sectors active, any area with access above 100ms will be counted as slow area. The ERROR counter below the SLOW counter shows how many times the system entered RED SINGLE sector read mode during scan. This mode means that there was an error in multi sector scan and that the program needs to check each sector of that area separately.

Bottom left corner of scan screen shows access time statistics on the fly with FAST, SLOW and CUR access times in ms for the current block of sectors. M specifies the current mode (SINGLE or MULTI), R specifies the current repair count 1 – 99, S specifies the slow sectors refresh access time and whether it is activated or no, P specifies the current pass and total passes. The last value is the scan progress in %.

• SCSI EX mode added which is selected automatically if the SCSI device/USB bridge supports it.
• Scan and copy system uses read/write/verify (16) if supported – current SCSI storage limit is 8ZiB/128 PiB with 64bit LBA access.
• Firmware driven force ATA password reset for most known drives – light blue options are only available in registered version.
  • Toshiba ATA + SATA (all known)
  • WD ATA + SATA (Marvel chip)
  • Samsung ATA + SATA (all known including Trinity)
  • HGST/Hitachi/Fujitsu SATA drives that lock SA access when the drive is locked are currently not supported
  • Seagate drives that work with terminal are currently not supported
• SCT Error Recovery Control command supported. This can be modified on any drive that supports the feature.
  However the setting is not permanent. It will be reset to the default for the drive after power off.

• Drevitalize (Win) : Wrongly detected devices (including USB) are no longer displayed on the list. Example : open handle to physical drive succeeds but retrieving drive geometry either via Windows WinApi or ATA identify fails.
• Drevitalize (Win) : ATA identify information has now priority over WinApi obtained drive info. USB connected drives have their real name displayed and all supported vendor specific commands should work.
• Drevitalize (DOS) : Keyboard handler fix : modification to support all possible chipsets (including Dell, HP PCs).
• Drevitalize (DOS) : Message on screen during auto-detection of drives to wait at least 5min. Under AHCI detection time is around 5 seconds, legacy ATA system detection can take up to 2 min.
• Drevitalize (all) : Toshiba HDDs support added for clear defect reassign and clear SMART (currently ATA only).
• Drevitalize (all) : Fujitsu SATA HDDs support added for clear defect reassign function (previously ATA only).
• Drevitalize (all) : Write delay on previous read error reduced to 100ms in bad sector recovery loop (previously 500ms).

• Drevitalize (win) : Critical update – correction of the core engine. Scan process now uses 5 times less CPU (from 5% on modern machines up to 12% on Core 2 Duo).
• Drevitalize (Win) : Interface updated to prevent accidental double click on displayed page when switching menus.
• Drevitalize (all) : Spelling errors corrected.
• Drevitalize (all) : SMART reporting that caused some SSD report as bad corrected.
• Drevitalize (all) : SMART analysis updated. Possible SMART status results : perfect drive, drive has warnings, defective drive.
• Drevitalize (all) : SMART cirtical values taken into account for final status evaluation : raw read error rate, reallocated sector count, seek error rate, spinup retry count, soft read error rate, end to end error, uncorrectable errors, hardware ecc recovered, reallocated events count, pending sector count, offline scan uncorrectable, udma crc error rate, write error rate, soft read error rate.
• Drevitalize (DOS) : It is now possible to switch to Read Verify mode under AHCI subsystem and reach 1.2GB/s scan speed with SSD drives after secure erase.
• Drevitalize (DOS) : Software buffer has been incresed from 32KB to 128KB, this change increases scan speed by 25%.
• Drevitalize (DOS) : USB support for DOS improved and speed increased by 25%, no more shadow HDD detected as USB bug.
• Drevitalize (DOS) : report.log file will only be written if there is enough space on default drive.
• Drevitalize (DOS) : AHCI and BIOS core recovery loop corrected/slowed down, 500ms delay on previous read/write error to better handle serious surface defects.
• Drevitalize (Win) : Recovery loop cache management system ported from DOS to Windows version. Not as effective as under DOS but significantly increases bad sector recovery success and limits to minimum false reports on corrected bad sectors.
• Drevitalize (all) : SMART reset attribute values command added. Supported models : IBM/Hitachi/HGST/WD (new)/Samsung (all – including Samsung-Seagate new drives).
• Drevitalize (all) : Different system for serial number verification in registered version.

• Drevitalize (Windows) : fixed bug related to USB detection of fixed drives connected via an old SCSI bridge that does not support the SATL specification and as such does not return the ATA identify command. Pen drives or new USB 3.0 SATA adapters were not affected by this bug.
• Drevitalize (Windows) : fixed bug in log file that made the same information appear multiple times if user decided to stop the program during bad sector recovery loop.
• Drevitalize (Windows) : fixed bug in log file that displayed bad sector 0 as non recovered when stopping the program during bad sector recovery loop, even though sector 0 was never tested or accessed.
• Drevitalize (Windows) : Drevitalize 3.23.2 installer for registered users has an updated file list to uninstall in case of program removal. Temporary html file with most recent program version (which is saved to installation directory) will be deleted too.

• Drevitalize (Windows) : modification of drives detection code. Obsolete interface dropped.
• Drevitalize (Windows) : eSATA wake up from sleep bug fixed.
• Drevitalize (DOS) : added new AHCI chips support.
• Drevitalize (DOS) : new command line parameters.
  /NOAHCI – to run without AHCI
  /OFF – to switch off PC after scan, either via APM or ACPI. Report is saved to report.log (all Intel LPC chips supported and most AMD).
  /SCANO – to run a scan only (read test) on first detected SATA HDD.
  /SCANR – to run a scan and repair (read test) on first detected SATA HDD.
  /SCANW – to run a scan and repair (write test) on first detected SATA HDD.
  • any combination of the command line parameters is accepted.
  • command line parameters are reseted if user breaks the scan with ESC.
  • if more scan commands are specified then the last one is effective.
  • if scan is started from command line, Drevitalize (DOS) will exit to system after the scan has completed, unless it was instructed to switch off the PC.
  • no more than 3 parameters are accepted.
• Drevitalize (all) : removed command ‘ECC functionality’ because it is obsolete in current ATA specification.
• Drevitalize (all) : added command ‘Clear defect reassign’ the so called Grown Defect List for WD, Samsung and Fujitsu hard drives.
• Drevitalize (all) : Format unit support added for Fujitsu (ATA drives only).
• Drevitalize (all) : added command to clear the SMART for WD and Samsung drives (only in registered version). SMART will be cleared in supported models if user holds left SHIFT while executing the ‘Clear defect reassign’ command.
• Drevitalize (all) : log file is now more detailed. It displays bad sectors found, refreshed sectors, bad SBuff areas and slow Sbuff areas. Sbuff : Software Buffer reads/writes in multi sector mode. By default, anything with an access higher than 150ms per Sbuff area is treated as a slow area. For a drive exposing 512 bytes per sector access, Sbuff is 32KB under DOS and 128KB under Windows.
• Starting the DRevitalize 3.22+ (registered) installer will auto update any previous 3.xx DRevitalize versions installed. Any old 3.xx demo or registered versions of Drevitalize will be removed.
• Drevitalize (Windows) registered will now by default check if new version is available when starting. User can stop checking for updates only when local version of Drevitalize is not up to date. No serial numbers or internet IPs are collected.
• Double signed with SHA1 and SHA256 key to support all Windows versions starting with Windows Vista.

• DRevitalize (Windows) no longer uses CPU when idle.
• Corrected some spelling erros.
• Log file is always saved to desktop after a hard drive scan.
• Drevitalize (DOS) write cache disable on write command timeout during scan fixed.
• Fast scan – possiblity to skip areas during scan with arrow keys. Down/Up arrow by 10mln sectors, left/right arrow by 1mln sectors.
• Format Unit support for Western Digital hard drives (new models based on Marvell chip).
  Currently supported drives for format unit include : IBM (old), Hitachi (old), HGST (new), WD (new).
  The sequence of commands executed is : clear G-List, full format with P-List.
• Copy Drive function now supports the optional ATA command write uncorrectable to target drive.
• Read/Write long procedures, although implemented, are currently disabled and not used by any function in this version of Drevitalize.

• DRevitalize (Windows) has a different source handle creation strategy making the process run on almost any type of system.
• It is now possible to copy a drive into self in the Windows version.
• Further improved compatibility with a wide range of USB bridges – proper implementation of ATA passthrough 16.
• Introduction of several functions into features menu : secure erase, format unit, automatic acoustic management, reverting, ECC control feature.
• SMART specific functions : attribute autosave, automatic off-line collection, save attribute values on demand.
• ATA security feature set : ATA lock drive, ATA unlock drive, ATA set master password, ATA display security state.
• Device Configuration Overlay menu with the possibility to set any supported drive configuration.

• DRevitalize (Windows) copy raw data function now properly locks and dismounts any volumes present on the target drive before starting the copy.
• Improved compatibility with a wide range of USB bridges – proper implementation of ATA passthrough strictly according to SAT docs.
• DOS version – cache switching mechanism now affects both, read and write cache when in bad sector recovery loop.
• Advanced features and firmware menu started. Currently only a small set of advanced features is implemented.
• Host Protected Area volatile and non-volatile option added to advanced features menu. Non-volatile modification is preserved on power off.
• Modification of SMART data colors. Good attributes are displayed in gray with a green OK. Important attributes that need attention but are still OK are displayed in white, failed attributes are displayed in light red.

• Slow sectors value now resets to 150ms or 20ms (single mode) for next scan if default value was changed.
• Windows ‘copy raw data’ function now has a confirmation box whether to proceed or not – user has to type ‘YES’.
• DOS version – slow sectors refresh does not disable read look-ahead in single sector mode. A slow sector is not a bad sector that is why additional ATA commands do not need to be applied. This makes the refresh process as fast as under Windows or Drevitalize 2.44 DOS.
• DOS version – single sector mode runs at full possible speed. Additional ATA commands are only executed when entering bad sector recovery loop and for the next remaining sectors on the current block – DOS block has 64 sectors (SBuff is 32KB on a 512 bytes per sector disk).

• Windows GUI instead of console mode for the Windows version.
• Asynchronous I/O for WinAPI access, synchronous for ATA/SCSI (DRevitalize 2.42 uses synchronous I/O for all modes).
• Faster reads/writes/scan x2 or x3 due to intelligent GUI update, not every I/O operation like in 2.42 version.
• Extended and precise status and error information with WinAPI lasterror code, SCSI sense or ATA registers displayed when scanning drive. Progress in % shown on bottom of screen.
• SMART status with extended info and updated attribute names (extended info includes the missing bytes from raw value).
• Fast copy option with recovery mode. Possibility to copy 1 drive to another with selected offsets and number of sectors – intelligent 3 step recovery of encountered bad blocks on source drive (achieved with reads only – no data or signals are written to the source drive).
• Minor bugs and enhancements like serial number of HDD in Windows 7/8 corrected. Aware of Windows 10 – target it Windows 10 if detected.
• ATA/SCSI system now uses DMA or DMA EXT access instead of PIO access for drive reads and writes in multisector mode.
• DOS native AHCI on most SATA controllers compliant with the AHCI v1.3 specification. Full error diagnostics and failure recovery of the HBA according to the AHCI specification v1.3.
• Possibility to detect up to 32 AHCI SATA devices under DOS. To run the DOS version without AHCI support please use the -noahci switch on command line.
• Corrected multi sector and single sector precision timers, corrected and improved ETA countdown.
• Able to detect 512e (512 bytes per sector emulated) and 4096n (4096 bytes per sector native) drives.
• DOS version has a modified recovery procedure which is significantly more effective than the windows version and any other DRevitalize versions released in the past. Moreover, in SINGLE scan mode or upon entering SINGLE recovery mode read look-ahead cache will be disabled to provide environment as close as possible to floppy recovery mode without any caches going in the way. This change further enforces proper recovery, minimizing false success and the relocation of sectors to spare area.
• Consistent write cache flush procedure ported to AHCI (available since 2.42 version in ATA and ATA/RV modes).
• Higher precision key handler under DOS to catch quit requests.
• Advanced data recovery on-the-fly from bad sectors. At the end statistics screen DRevitalize will show the number of bytes reclaimed from bad sectors. Bytes that were unreadable before by normal means. This feature is only available in read and repair mode. Please be aware that any bytes residing in bad sectors that could not be recovered after the 4 step retry recovery process in multi sector mode (or 3 step retry recovery process in single sector mode) will be cleared out in order to reclaim the bad sector. This is a normal behaviour of any Drevitalize version since release 1.00.
• Possibility to copy with recovery from any logical sector drive to any logical sector drive between 512 and 8192 bytes per logical sector. Logical sector size of both drives needs to be a multiple of 512. Current limitation is 4096 bytes per logical sector for DOS version and 8192 bytes per logical sector for Windows version. Copied sectors value will always reflect the target drive sector size.
• Windows 7 special case : Bytes per logical and bytes per physical sector are taken directly from ATA identify if possible. It appears Windows 7 returns wrong values for physical sector size of advanced format SATA drives connected directly to SATA controller. Problem does not occur on higher Windows versions.
• ATA DMA transfers are now cut to 64KB chunks to ensure maximum compatibility to any driver and Windows OS starting from Windows XP.
• DRevitalize (Windows) will request 32MB physical memory from the operating system. It will refuse to run if the system is not able to provide that much. All possible transfer buffers will be locked into physical memory.

• Auto detection of Hard Drives modified during start to support systems with outdated version of INT 13H extensions.
• SATA detection strategy modified to support new systems running in SATA/AHCI mode.
• Not supported yet SATA/AHCI systems will have drive access limited to BIOS only.

• SCSI mode added for non ATA drives, pen drives and ATA drives connected via USB.
• SMART status possible on ATA drives connected via USB if the bridge supports non translated ATA commands via SCSI.
• Full information for ATA drives connected via USB if the bridge supports non translated ATA commands via SCSI.
• Command sense and error info for devices working in SCSI mode.

• Corrected support for 1.5TB+ drives. Now Drevitalize accepts any drive up to 48-bit LBA limit.
• New systems of operation available : direct access in PIO mode and fast ATA RV (Read Verify) diagnostic mode.
• Drevitalize will no longer enable SMART if it was disabled by the BIOS on startup.
• Corrected errors in direct access ATA commands code for the DOS version.
• Corrected errors in SATA access code and detection order.
• Scan speed increased to 132MB/s and more for high-end SATA drives in native mode using Read Verify system.

• New modes of operation : scan only mode, scan and repair (read test), scan and repair (write test).
• The possibility to analyze SMART data even under Windows XP/Vista.
• New advanced access statistics generated on the fly.
• Better information on the selected form of test and the current slow sectors mark.
• Slow sectors are now shown on progress bar.
• Minor algorithm enhancements.
• Recognizes Windows Seven.

• Full Windows Vista support.
• Better handling of sector 0 bad problem.
• Up to 32 storage devices are detected and can be selected to test and repair.
• Ability to change from Multi sector mode to Single sector mode operation.
• New default software buffer is 128K (256 sectors) to speed up data transfer and allow faster response when bad sectors are detected in multi sector scan mode.
• Option tab upon selecting a drive for testing, these include the possibility to change starting and ending sector, number of passes and repair count loop.
• New option allowing to revitalize slow sectors. The user will be able to specify a delay in ms when accessing a single sector above which the sector will be treated like a bad sector. Sector content will be refreshed after applying the drevitalize process.
• New option allowing to revitalize slow sectors. The user will be able to specify a delay in ms when accessing an area of sectors above which the area will be treated like a bad area. Each sector of that area will be refreshed after applying the drevitalize process.
• Special console handlers to restore the repaired disk state. They take over on closing the Drevitalize window.
• Extended info with 3 color steps for progress bar with mode, repair count, slow sector refresh and number of passes information.
• Extended statistics at the end including absolute sectors info.
• Pressing ESC at end screen now takes the user back to main menu instead of exiting the program.
• DOS version should have full SATA info implemented.
• Corrected some minor color flaws in DOS version on main menu.