How to copy (clone) a NAND Flash device using Dataman programmers

General topics relating to devices and programming
Dataman (Neil Parker)
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Joined: 10 Nov 2011 09:51

How to copy (clone) a NAND Flash device using Dataman programmers

Postby Dataman (Neil Parker) » 14 Jan 2019 11:48

nand-flash.png
Recommended NAND Flash device copy procedure for Dataman device programmers



1. Reading master device:
Select the device and then open the Access Method <Alt+S> menu and change the following settings:

Invalid blocks management = Treat All Blocks
Spare Area Usage = User Data
User Area - Number of Blocks = number of blocks in device (e.g. 4096 for K9F4G08U0D)

Run the Read operation. After Read is done, save the buffer content to disk.

Now you have a Master device byte-by-byte image stored on your disk. Please remember that this image includes all existing bad blocks in the master device, as well as all read flip-flops (single bit errors) that have occurred during the Read operation. Both, bad blocks as well as any read flip-flops, will propagate into the new target device, thus reducing its capacity (bad block propagation) and data reliability (read flip-flops propagation).


2. Writing a copy:
Select the device and then open the Access Method <Alt+S> menu and change the following settings:

Invalid blocks management = Skip IB
Spare Area Usage = User Data
User Area - Number of Blocks = see note below

Read your master data from disk to the buffer and run the Program operation.

Note regarding the “Number of blocks” for the Program operation: In an ideal case the number of blocks available in the device should be entered here, similar to the read step above. But this will only work if the target device for copying to is 100% free of bad blocks.
So, in practice, you must reduce the number of programmed blocks by some value in order to account for this. We recommend that you determine some threshold for the maximum bad block count in the device and enter the value for the total number of blocks in the device reduced by this threshold. The number of blocks entered here cannot be less than the number of blocks actually occupied by data in the master device.

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