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Last post Author Topic: Diskovery  (Read 26953 times)

apankrat

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Diskovery
« on: March 30, 2016, 10:56 AM »
Gentlemen,

I'd like to solicit your esteemed opinions on a piece of software of mine called Diskovery.

      https://pipemetrics.com/diskovery/beta

There's a longer description on the home page, but in short it's basically an app that enumerates all local drives and volumes, extracts all information it can about them and then renders it nicely in the UI. In particular, it shows drives' SMART counters, temperature and it also allows to look into RAID arrays and see their individual drives († though some conditions certainly apply, YMMV, etc.)

It started as a unit test runner for a SMART diagnostics module for a backup app, but then as I played with it I kept adding this and that and it sort of started to evolve into something useful in its own right. Fast forward laughably short 3 months of abandoned kids, neglected wife and alienated friends and here it is - a brand new pile of bits entering its beta.

I haven't shown it publicly anywhere else, so I'm interested in all and any opinions - from the general idea to the functionality to the UI design to what have you and then some.

Thanks,
Alex
Alex

apankrat

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #1 on: March 30, 2016, 11:25 AM »
A screenshot. How could I forget that.

diskovery.png
Alex

Jibz

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #2 on: March 30, 2016, 12:38 PM »
diskovery_admin-z.png

Would it be possible to display any useful information even without admin privileges?

apankrat

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #3 on: March 30, 2016, 12:53 PM »
Would it be possible to display any useful information even without admin privileges?

Drive devices can actually be opened without admin rights if using NULL or FILE_READ_ATTRIBUTES access, but this will cause vast majority of IOCTLs to fail, so you won't get much back. And any attempts to talk to the VDS service or open RAID controller device will fail outright. I started with the code that can work with and without admin rights, but the latter proved to be plain useless, so I scraped that.
Alex
« Last Edit: March 30, 2016, 01:05 PM by apankrat »

Jibz

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #4 on: March 30, 2016, 01:12 PM »
Okay, fair enough. Maybe note that the app requires admin rights on the page? if it says "just download and run", some people might try it on work computers where they do not have admin rights.

The UI looks very nice, I'll try and run it with admin rights later on.

Stoic Joker

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #5 on: March 30, 2016, 01:54 PM »
Nice, but it identifies my Samsung MZVPV256 SDD as a HDD. I don't know if that can be helped...but it's quite informative otherwise.

Thanks for sharing it.

apankrat

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #6 on: March 30, 2016, 02:14 PM »
Nice, but it identifies my Samsung MZVPV256 SDD as a HDD. I don't know if that can be helped...but it's quite informative otherwise.

Oh... interesting. SSD is detected by looking at the RPM value from the ATA IDENTIFY blob. There's a reserved value (something like "1") which is reserved for SSDs, so I guess in your case it was set to something else.

Can I get a copy of a scan log, please? There's a menu item in the app for that.
Alex

Stoic Joker

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #7 on: March 30, 2016, 03:04 PM »
Can I get a copy of a scan log, please? There's a menu item in the app for that.

Sent log from within the program...I hope it went where it was supposed to..

rgdot

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #8 on: March 30, 2016, 03:13 PM »
Can I get a copy of a scan log, please? There's a menu item in the app for that.

Sent log from within the program...I hope it went where it was supposed to..


How come I just received a log email?



:P

apankrat

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #9 on: March 30, 2016, 05:50 PM »
Sent log from within the program...I hope it went where it was supposed to..

Got it, thanks. Very useful. I was unaware that there's a separate bus type for NVMe drives. Added now, so your Samsung should show up as SSD.
Alex
« Last Edit: March 30, 2016, 06:02 PM by apankrat »

4wd

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #10 on: March 30, 2016, 08:59 PM »
2016-03-31 12_56_39.pngDiskovery

It's identifying a PNY flash drive as USB 3.0 but saying it's in mode USB 1.1 - (currently writing to it at >18MB/s).

Addendum: This looks like it might be controller related - two different USB 3.0 Host controllers on my computer:
Onboard ASMedia controller using latest ASMedia driver shows USB 1.1.
PCIe Renesas controller using Microsoft Windows 10 drivers shows as USB 3.0.


Note: Driver reinstall fixed it.
« Last Edit: March 31, 2016, 07:00 AM by 4wd »

Jibz

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #11 on: March 31, 2016, 01:03 AM »
Had a chance to try it now, really nice work :Thmbsup: (as usual :P).

One thing I noticed; Under Logical volumes there are my usual drives, and one listed as just [Serial]. When I click it, there is no information about what this volume is used for as far as I can tell.

But if I click the physical storage device it is on, and expand the partition table, it says "Windows RE (Recovery Environment)" under Type. I think this information would be helpful in the page for the Logical volume.

apankrat

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #12 on: March 31, 2016, 02:13 AM »

It's identifying a PNY flash drive as USB 3.0 but saying it's in mode USB 1.1 - (currently writing to it at >18MB/s).

Addendum: This looks like it might be controller related - two different USB 3.0 Host controllers on my computer:
Onboard ASMedia controller using latest ASMedia driver shows USB 1.1.
PCIe Renesas controller using Microsoft Windows 10 drivers shows as USB 3.0.

Hmm... can I have a log, please? There's an option for that in the app's menu. Just put a little note in the remarks that it's from 4wd.
I'd like to see if it's something that can be parsed out of IOCTL_USB_GET_xxx responses.
Alex

apankrat

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #13 on: March 31, 2016, 02:29 AM »
Had a chance to try it now, really nice work :Thmbsup: (as usual :P).

A keyboard, a monitor and a good mono font is all one needs :)

One thing I noticed; Under Logical volumes there are my usual drives, and one listed as just [Serial]. When I click it, there is no information about what this volume is used for as far as I can tell.

But if I click the physical storage device it is on, and expand the partition table, it says "Windows RE (Recovery Environment)" under Type. I think this information would be helpful in the page for the Logical volume.

Noted. The thing is that "Windows RE (Recovery Environment)" is a partition type.
Alex

Stoic Joker

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #14 on: March 31, 2016, 06:31 AM »
Sent log from within the program...I hope it went where it was supposed to..

Got it, thanks. Very useful. I was unaware that there's a separate bus type for NVMe drives. Added now, so your Samsung should show up as SSD.

Yeah, it's a pretty weird duck ... It plugs into a PCIe slot on the motherboard.

3-2TB-Samsung-NVMe-SSD_2.png

I'll checkout the updated version when I get home tonight.

Thank you.

4wd

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #15 on: March 31, 2016, 06:59 AM »

It's identifying a PNY flash drive as USB 3.0 but saying it's in mode USB 1.1 - (currently writing to it at >18MB/s).

Addendum: This looks like it might be controller related - two different USB 3.0 Host controllers on my computer:
Onboard ASMedia controller using latest ASMedia driver shows USB 1.1.
PCIe Renesas controller using Microsoft Windows 10 drivers shows as USB 3.0.

Hmm... can I have a log, please? There's an option for that in the app's menu. Just put a little note in the remarks that it's from 4wd.
I'd like to see if it's something that can be parsed out of IOCTL_USB_GET_xxx responses.

Never mind, I thought I'd reinstall the drivers for the motherboard and guess what ... now it also says USB 3.0  :-\

apankrat

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #16 on: March 31, 2016, 07:41 AM »
Never mind, I thought I'd reinstall the drivers for the motherboard and guess what ... now it also says USB 3.0  :-\

Ah, wait. No, no, no. Damn. Such an excellent chance to fix up the app not to display "USB 1.1", because that made no sense. And now that nice little chance is no more... /whelp

---

In unrelated news - a new version (0.9.0.7) is out. Grab it here.

Improved SSD detection, added vendor detection for Samsung, Transcend, Crucial, Liteon and few others, added descriptions of several SSD-specific SMART attributes.
Alex

Lintalist

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #17 on: March 31, 2016, 02:57 PM »
Nice App.

I have a USB 3 flash drive, formatted as a truecrypt volume/partition. If you connect it Windows thinks it is an unformatted drive, Diskovery will identity the brand and size correctly at that stage. If I mount the volume, Windows will see a new drive, say K: but refresh or restarting Diskovery it won't show up as Logical volume. Is that intended or correct behavior or should K be listed as Logical drive? (I tried it  Windows 7 and 8.1).

apankrat

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #18 on: March 31, 2016, 04:16 PM »
It's an expected behavior, at least at the moment. Diskovery will ignore volumes that don't have at least one partition extent (and TC volumes don't).

Should it list these? It probably should, shouldn't it?
Alex

4wd

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #19 on: March 31, 2016, 10:51 PM »
Never mind, I thought I'd reinstall the drivers for the motherboard and guess what ... now it also says USB 3.0  :-\

Ah, wait. No, no, no. Damn. Such an excellent chance to fix up the app not to display "USB 1.1", because that made no sense. And now that nice little chance is no more... /whelp

Did I forget to mention I created a Restore point before reinstalling the drivers  ;)

2016-04-01 14_55_14.jpgDiskovery


Restored the system and sent the debug report with a USB 3.0 device plugged into each bus.

I think I see what happened, there is a driver version mismatch between the eXtensible Host Controller and the USB hub associated with it, ie. the Host controller is 1.16.32.1, whereas the associated Generic Hub is 1.16.28.1.  After upgrading the driver for the Generic Hub it becomes ASMedia Root Hub ... it's an idea anyway.

BTW, "Diskovery has stopped working" if it has no internet connectivity to send the report.
Faulting application name: diskovery-0.9.0.7.exe, version: 0.9.0.7, time stamp: 0x56fd08aa
Faulting module name: diskovery-0.9.0.7.exe, version: 0.9.0.7, time stamp: 0x56fd08aa
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000011e7
Faulting process ID: 0x1238
Faulting application start time: 0x01d18bc96a1f1115
Faulting application path: D:\Downloads\diskovery-0.9.0.7.exe
Faulting module path: D:\Downloads\diskovery-0.9.0.7.exe
Report ID: b0828fe3-95e2-4b0a-bfab-e043714c388a
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:
« Last Edit: March 31, 2016, 11:07 PM by 4wd »

apankrat

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #20 on: April 01, 2016, 04:29 AM »
Did I forget to mention I created a Restore point before reinstalling the drivers  ;)

I believe you did :)

Got your log, thanks. It is a case of a buggy driver. There's an IOCTL succinctly called IOCTL_USB_GET_NODE_CONNECTION_INFORMATION_EX which returns this bunch of data and in your case the request succeeded, but the data blob was all zeroes. It looks like AMedia devs had a stub in place but forgot to actually implement it. In that blob there's ConnectionStatus field, which too was at 0, which in turn happens to be a valid value for USB 1.1.

In any case, this is now detected and the UI will display current mode as unknown.

BTW, "Diskovery has stopped working" if it has no internet connectivity to send the report.

Whoops. Fixed now and 0.9.0.8 is out -

  • Adds vendor detection for M4-xxx Crucial drives, ADATA and HGTS drives
  • Adds a couple of new SSD SMART attributes
  • Now shows logical volumes that don't have physical extents, e.g. TrueCrypt and RamDisk mounts
  • Log viewing defaults to Notepad now unless Ctrl is held down, in which case it will use default ".log" viewer
Alex
« Last Edit: April 01, 2016, 04:46 AM by apankrat »

Lintalist

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #21 on: April 01, 2016, 12:16 PM »
  • Now shows logical volumes that don't have physical extents, e.g. TrueCrypt and RamDisk mounts
-apankrat
Tested it and works, thanks!

Stoic Joker

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #22 on: April 02, 2016, 07:33 AM »
Improved SSD detection, added vendor detection for Samsung, Transcend, Crucial, Liteon and few others, added descriptions of several SSD-specific SMART attributes.

Drive shows as an SSD, but Vendor, Health, Temperature, and SMART Data are all blank, and serial number is all zeros.

The RAID5 storage array information looks great though.

Using v9.0.9 - Scan log sent.

apankrat

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #23 on: April 02, 2016, 05:36 PM »
Drive shows as an SSD, but Vendor, Health, Temperature, and SMART Data are all blank, and serial number is all zeros.

Got the log, thanks. The vendor info is trivial to fix, but the rest requires some effort. Apparently NVMe SSDs don't implement regular SMART interface, but rather their own (in a form of Admin Query Log command). What's even more exciting is that it appears to be vendor-specific, so what works for Intel NVMes won't work for Samsungs and vice versa. I'll try and procure a couple of drives to play with and will go from there. Just bear with me.
Alex

Stoic Joker

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Re: Diskovery
« Reply #24 on: April 02, 2016, 06:25 PM »
It's all good man ... I'll test what I can for you.