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VeniceR 2700

Damaged heads, contamination on all surfaces inside drive. Media damage rings H1. Cleaned all platter surfaces, swapped to new base, bent H1 back on donor head stack. I thought that by disabling H1 in NV-RAM drive would come ready and ID normally but this doesn't seem to be as...

It's usually easier and potentially less damaging to surrounding areas to just bend the head back.

The ROM (which you are calling BIOS) is the 8-pin IC directly in the center of your bottom picture with p/n 25xxxx Hopefully you don't plan on using a single soldering iron for this job. If you've got irreplaceable data on this drive and if you're not experienced with working with this type of...

Sounds like bad H0 or media damage. I've had cases where a head can read the service area but not data area. Also, heads test runs on locations near/in the service area, not the data area. If it was my case I'd inspect H0 slider under microscope to confirm whether you've got media damage then...

WDBLPG0020BBK-0B --> WD20SDZW-11JJ8S0 (Charger)

Any contamination on sliders? See any platter wobble?

I've had this problem too but just can't remember exactly what the solution was. You might try starting over with DE--creating a new task, new heads map.

Yes. If it's the same 800066 I bought for $88 it's legit.

Sure... it will kill the top head... eventually. What do the rest of the sliders look like? If they're clean you can always prevent the top head from touching the platter, image the other heads, and then with a new head stack go for broke on the top head.

I was hoping to be able to provide you with some donor parts but I looked through the ones I have and none have the same controller.

Is this one of those promotional no-brand 4GB flash drives?

After reading all your posts in this thread (3 times), it's not clear if this is a case you're actually working with or if you're collecting information. If it IS a case, can you provide more information? What model? How many heads? SA on Toshibas is on top surface area so for example if...

@ :40 https://v.qq.com/x/page/p05133o9mp1.html

I have it too and think it's excellent. Clean, precisely manufactured, and non-magnetic. But it's not a "platter swap tool". It's more of a temporary platter repository. I use it mostly for holding and cleaning platters on multiple-platter drives. As Luke stated, the "extractor" uses standard...

I agree. I just took the post at face value ...I now realize the OP might be asking if it would help his case.

Some sort of spacer needs to go there. It's really the only way to work with a drive with a destroyed parking zone. I find it easier to work with materials other than hot glue, but the idea is the same.

Amazon.

These work very, very well... at least in certain situations. I do a lot of platter cleaning. When I read this post I was working with a dirty top platter of a 2.5" Hitachi. For something that should have taken 5 minutes I ended up spending at least 4 hours total on it and was only able to do...

Are you sure? I think the box the OP asks about changes the source to "offline" in Windows Disk Management but doesn't write anything to the source. I may be wrong but that box might only pop up when source isn't connected to a PC3k port, like when using a flash drive in a USB port as source...

Did you test the donor before swapping heads (always a good practice)? If not, looking at the imaging speed of H0 with the heads back in the donor would tell you a lot. I'm sure we've all received donors that are not exactly in pristine condition.

I assumed you had a spare USB PCB to use. Yup, this sounds frustrating. It sounds like it's ID'ing with full capacity... sort of sounds like a translator issue besides the fact that the SA seems fine. Regenerating it might not hurt if you've got it saved and the heads are ok. Were you able...

I've had this problem. Try converting back to the USB pcb.

You may want to contact Dmitri: http://en.rlab.ru/ My last DVR case was one where someone had maliciously deleted video footage and reset the password. I could have purchased a one-time use of DVR Examiner for $999 but Dmitri produced the same (if not better) result remotely for much less.

The downward pressure from the tweezers is creating the "wobble" effect you're seeing--I can see horizontal travel on the platter edge at the very beginning of the video before you even start to spin the platter. If you were to spin the platter with a torx driver inserted into the screw in the...

Does DFL support building a virtual translator? That might help reading speed. The donor heads producing the same results suggests highly that the heads are not at fault but if you try patient heads on one of the 2 compatible donors you tried it would verify that for good. I haven't seen many...

I bet that green light doesn't show the smears/residue left from the cotton swab... or maybe it does. Now I'm curious... bought a green light and will experiment with it. It would be nice to not have to have a fresh set of batteries in my LED flashlight just to see the tiniest specs of...

With the patient PCB on the donor drive, how does the donor act? If it clicks or does not stay spinning then the heads are not a match for the patient.

Either donor heads aren't a suitable match for your patient (sometimes just matching preamp isn't enough) or you're dealing with an issue that is not heads-related. What model/family drive are you working with? Have you edited SAP control flags to disable all but head 0 or head 0/1?

For future reference... this is the reply I received from ACE: The counting of the number of bad sectors in each file for displaying in the report results was not planned when creating the DE program. Accordingly, there is no possibility to store and transmit a cell with this data in the DE...

Bummer. Thanks Luke!

In data extractor, in the report generated when saving files, along with the list of files with bad/unreadable sectors, is there a way to show the number of bad/unreadable sectors in each file? I like how the DDI reports this information when saving files; I would think the PC3K would have...

Not necessarily. There are other things to look for such as label on heads and slider topography. For me this would be a last resort. This would be a good example of the need to experiment first on a drive other than the patient. But then you'd have your matching donor :D As Jared said...

Does the donor spin up and stay spinning with the patient PCB... and not make any clicking, etc?

Nice. Thanks!

Would you happen to know when this update will be released?

I'm in Fort Collins. You?

I know exactly what you mean--sort of an angry vibration after a platter swap, or after having to remove the platters for any reason. I see it more with multiple-platter Seagate drives. IMO it's not incorrect torque on the ring screws causing the platter wobble (as long as you have them all...

Welcome Chris--nice to see another Coloradoan here!

Dylos does make a 0.3 micron one, they just don't advertise it for sale for some reason. I became aware of this about 1.5 years ago and at that time from what I can remember they wanted $350-$400 for it. Decent.

I read a post on the ACE forum a while back that sort of relates to this. Something like the reason hot swaps don't work on F3 drives like on others is because the SA components' locations are not consistent and vary greatly from drive to drive. I suppose if/when ACE figures out how to map the...

Yes, the $350 is definitely worth it. Also allows the newer version of the Recovery Environment which is notably improved.

Both screens are normal. Top shows DDI during imaging (streaming Hex data). Bottom looks like before before staring imaging. If imaging was in progress it would look exactly like top screen (streaming Hex data). There was a firmware upgrade about 1.5 years ago that allows pressing 1, 2 or 3...

I was just working on a recovery where I ran across this error many times and I'm racking my brain to remember the exact situation that caused it and the resolution. What's the model/family?

Hi Nouman and welcome to the forum.

Yes, of course.

If PCBs are same number, see if donor spins & stays spinning with patient PCB with no odd noises. If so, inspect donor and patient sliders under microscope and make sure the patterns match. I've seen at least 3 different slider patterns on Passports with the same model (but different DCMs)...

Nice logical diagnosis--you've got to figure that anything electrical might have been damaged.

That easy, huh? Figures. Thanks Jared. The sad thing is that I spent days with ACE support trying to get remote support on this and their solution was the RAW recovery method. Even more sad that I didn't see the checkbox in the first place!

In Data Extractor I have a folder/file list from a recovery with media damage, so some files have bad sectors (quite a few actually). I would like to prevent these files from being included in the final recovery. I've been able to create a map of the files with bad sectors however I haven't...

Nice! We've had a couple cases where the Surface automatically assigned a Bitlocker key and customer had never set up Bitlocker. Sure enough, all they had to do was log into their account and there the key was.

The customer should be able to recover their Bitlocker recovery key by logging into their Microsoft account.

Yes--contacts on the ROM with the contact pads on the PCB. I usually don't need extra solder; I just use a little flux on donor and patient ROM before removing. Then check solder joints under microscope. If I see an "iffy" joint then I'll flow a little extra solder on it just so I know I...

Though it looks to be attached with the correct polarity, if all the contacts aren't touching the pads it won't spin up.

Are you doing the ROM editing with the Grenada or F3 arch common utility?

Thanks Luke. I actually hadn't thought of that.

I was excited about this too until I tried it with a couple cases I'm working on... both are APFS with Filevault. RStudio detects them and recognizes that they're locked but says something like "unknown encryption" and won't unlock them. The ironic thing is that latest release of RStudio for...

I realize I wasn't clear--I only had to make 1 entry into the slip list. I was saying that I would have probably had to make at least 11 more if I hadn't preserved the NRG list. OR I suspect that if I hadn't preserved the NRG list during regeneration, writing back the saved resource might have...

Sure. Nothing special--I used the standard command for regenerating translator while preserving/taking into account the NRG list: F3 T>m0,6,3,,,,,22 Afterwards I checked the NRG with F3 T>V40 to verify that the entries were still there. The original list had 11 entries...after regeneration...

Larry--at the time of your post I was working on a 2TB Rosewood which takes the comb for 2 platters. I went back and checked and sure enough--the 1 platter comb you're working with has a different shape so the technique I mentioned won't work with them. I think I do something similar with the...

I was unable to get a good read on the translator. Things went downhill. Drive would ID but hang bsy when trying to refresh modules list, restart autotune, etc. until power cycle. OK'd clearing Media Cache with customer--data was only useful if he had it by tomorrow so he didn't have a problem...

Larry--I know exactly what you're talking about. I have a different method for this: Instead of rotating the tool into the heads, I press on the pivot point of the tool with tweezers to hold it in alignment and back the heads into the tool. The tool snugs up against a ridge in the drive base...

Larry, I also use the Apex tool. I've used them for about 50 head swaps on 2 and 4 head Rosewoods and they work great for me. My set fits pretty tightly and I haven't needed to use the locking pin.

Refer to post #2 by Jared in this thread: how-to-check-to-see-if-wd-is-encrpyted-t1000.html If encrypted then you will have to use decrypt option as pclab said. After you have the decrypted image, you may want to take a sector-to-sector copy of it. Then you will have to enter the WD password...

Thanks Jared! I'm having some success with this method. Without keying in the ABA values, on copy 0 all but the very top of the file is corrupt. On copy 1 everything from the top until about halfway down is corrupt. I'm getting sporadic results by keying in the ABA values and will have to...

*Also posted on ACE Labs forum IDs correctly but with 0 capacity. Can backup all resources EXCEPT: DTs DT 0000 (Flash ROM), Read Adaptive Parameters File (RAP).............. : Error Error : Error requesting command state "RD CP part" (ABR) DT 0000 (RAM), Read Adaptive Parameters File...

Patient WD1003FBYX-01Y7B1 Vulcan RE Aug 28 2013 HARNHTJAHBN Thailand PCB: 771702 Head map 0 1 2 3 Donor: WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0 Tahoe 2D Mar 14 2011 HBRNHTJABB Thailand PCB: 771640 Head map 0 1 2 3

You might try disabling all but head 0.

Thanks Jared. I'll inquire as to the thick or thin provisioning.

Client was hosting a Windows 10 Virtual Machine on XenServer, using a Jetstor SAN for the storage, the Jetstor uses fiber channel to connect to the host server, which is where all the VM’s reside; the Jetstor is a 16 bay unit, with 8 Mirrored 2TB arrays. Attached is a pic of the original RAID...

Ah--I didn't notice the difference--thanks for the clarification. I ordered a set myself.

Here's an eBay link for US shipping: https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-40pcs-Dupo ... SwL5BZyhP6

Solved: This ROM has 2 copies of SAP and PC3K was modifying the first copy. Apparently on this drive the 2nd copy is the active one. Changed max head in 2nd copy.

I've played around with the max head setting in SAP control flags and it makes no difference. It just seems like none of the changes take effect. For example, with a Grenada ST2000DM001 (4 heads) if I change the ROM heads map to 00 01 02 02 or change Max head to 2, the output from F3 7>x is...

I've got a case with some media damage on the top platter and need to bend the head back and disable it. Before bending the head back the drive did initialize and ID but after bending and changing ROM physical head map to 00 01 02 03 04 04 the drive just clicks once and spins down. I've also...

I didn't have to search for RAID parameters--as soon as I opened R-studio, with both drives attached, the 2.72TB HFS+ filesystem and partition name was there. I was pleasantly surprised. Each drive connected individually showed a 2.72TB no-name HFS+ filesystem. We might have 2 completely...

I got the exact same thing in a couple days ago. With both drives connected to a PC, R-studio recognized the filesystem (this one was HFS+). I just copied the data off--didn't even have to run a scan.

You bet. It was hopeless trying to fit side cutters in between heads and these fit right in.

These snips work great: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BM ... UTF8&psc=1

Copied from return of C>Q command from Rosewood drive: Level C 'B': Rev 0001.0001, Overlay, Display Channel Status List Data Level C 'D': Rev 0003.0000, Overlay, Display Channel Memory, D[MemorySelect],[StartAddress],[NumberOfSymbols],[BufferSelect] Level C 'E': Rev 0001.0000, Overlay, Display...

It appears the PC3k has not implemented disabling heads in ROM for this family. Is this correct or is there a way to do it that I'm missing?

Amarbir--no, I don't think I have ever had a situation with too tight of a screw with any drive. My hands are internally calibrated for torque settings :D

Update: The donor heads I thought should be compatible have a 0, 1, 2, 3 head map whereas my patient has a 0, 1, 2 head map with the top head missing. I acquired a donor that was virtually a perfect match along with same head map. After trying those heads and having the same symptoms, I...

:lol:

Yes. They are native. First data recovery attempt is with us.

This is something I discovered pretty quickly working with a 5475A9 ARM case. I also ended up using my external EEPROM programmer/reader on this one.

Hoping for a new idea on this one... Drive clicks, clacks, knocks for about 15 sec then becomes ready but ABRT when try to ID (drive stays spinning). Heads map: 0, 1, 2, top head missing from HSA. -Swapped heads with 2 donors with no change in symptoms -Donor IDs with heads from patient -No...

No. But I love lasers and now am going to have to bounce them off spinning platters because it will be fun. Thanks Jared :D

I usually use the Base Replace tool but have used the tape method also. I've done about 30 platter swaps and have never experienced those issues you mention. In fact, the first time I heard of motor balance being a problem after a platter swap was a couple weeks ago when I ran across the $300...

2 days after I read this I did the same darn thing on a 3TB Seagate DM and thought fondly of this post. Why should I listen to the advice of others? :lol: Fortunately, the pads were still in place and I was able to solder the block back on. Lesson learned!!

That's really helpful. Thanks for sharing this!!

Amarbir, Though I am pretty confident I could sand off the protective coating without causing further damage, I have never attempted it before and this is critical data so I'd rather not risk it.

Thanks again Jared!

Thanks Jared. I told my customer that IF a pro thinks it's recoverable to expect a cost of at least $1K. Any idea if I'm in the ballpark here or if you think the average cost for something like this would be more?

4GB Dane-Elec flash drive if that makes a difference. To me it looks like the break is too far into the circuitry to be recoverable but thought I'd ask.

On my Mars recovery I had to do a hot swap with a smart donor each time I wanted to start copying data. Without a hot swap, the patient drive initializes but shows 0 LBA and doesn't ID. I am, however, able to upload LDR on it and it does not get stuck on busy. Then I can block SA access...

This is the ROM from my recovery. Same P/N and MFR date is 2 weeks before yours.

You might try booting the Mac to external media, get to terminal, and see if the drive is recognized. Then dd it. I've imaged several of these this way that aren't recognized on the adapter. https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-to-cr ... d-command/

Hey Jared--I'm available if you want to give me a call this morning--I'm pretty sure I'm seeing the same thing you are with my setup but just want to make sure.

No need to apologize--I wasn't saying it is annoying, I was just being friendly. I'd like to see that video :D

Really. I've been disappointed by this a few times. I like Amarbir's idea of regenerating mod 47 from SA... once you get access to it. I suppose you can start programming different ROMs into your donor PCB until you find one that allows the drive to come ready, like in the link to the...

I've got several from a Mars recovery I did recently. I'll check tomorrow. On that recovery my PCB was cooked too--the motor controller IC was fried. I ended up replacing that IC in order to extract the ROM. Also, I just checked the FW mods I had backed up from a couple of the donor drives...

AND that the slider patterns match.

+1 :D AND that the slider patterns match

Good job being resourceful on that one!

Hi Sudheer and welcome. You will find a great group of friendly folks here.

Thanks for the tip Amarbir--I will keep that in mind. As many experienced DR pros have found, there are other ways to find donor heads instead of strictly going off the accepted donor matching guidelines such as published on donordrives.com. Relative to most of the established DR pros, I have...

I've had quite a few and none of my donors have had exactly matching code after the /. In fact, I usually disregard everything on the Drive Rev line. To find donor heads I just match the model and head map of course, make sure the donor drive spins with the patient PCB and make sure the...

I realize there are plenty of non-US reputable guys that could work with the dump, I just am not going to ship this overseas to get the off-chip extraction done :) I'll talk this over with my customer Jared and probably give you a ring!

Well if you do get it approved, if Blizzard would be willing to part with his working flash drive you could just transplant the flash memory chip to it. As long as the controllers are the same. Easy peezy :D

Northern Colorado. I'm willing to ship it to anyone reputable from this forum (in the US).

I believe I need to pass this on to someone. After some work on the circuitry, the hardware is recognized but the storage is not. The Deepspar identifies the model, etc but shows 0 capacity. I've determined that the controller chip is likely the culprit. Typically I'd try a different...

I had one of these that needed the CONGEN params modified and there was nothing I could do because of the locked diag port (and no utility supports it yet as Amarbir stated). The options here are to find a rogue Seagate engineer with access to a Seagate server or send it to Seagate. The first...

If he did, he didn't confirm it. Or it's just not obvious to me where the link is...

Larry, I like your suggestion. I'd be happy to go into more detail if Jared gives me access to the Secrets room. :D

Obviously I did quite a bit of cleanup on the tool after this pic was taken to make it cleanroom-ready. Also, as rough as it looks, the measurements are precise--it took quite a bit of time to get them right. 1) The main idea behind the tool was to keep the platters from moving around while...

No problem--I got the idea from a post I read where someone had to limit head travel to avoid moving over some media damage. They put a spacer somewhere in the magnet assembly but it was on a drive that had a parking ramp. I used the same method. It's probably also fortunate that this drive...

Well, 6 weeks after taking on this case it's looking to be better than a 99% recovery. It took me a month to make a tool to suspend all 3 platters, allow me to spread them apart, and keep rotational alignment while I worked on each platter surface. Then it took another week to figure out how...

Good work!! Talk about hellish recoveries--I would have taken on 10 of those cases instead of the 2500JB I have now. All 6 platter surfaces completely covered with a layer of silicon dust from 3 of the parking zones being torn to shreds. :shock: Wish me luck!

Sorry Jared, no ROM match. There ARE a bunch on the eBays though...

Jared, What is the model of this drive? I don't have what you need in my saved resources but I'll take a look through my horde of donor drives tomorrow. Sam

G003235C SATA also is also compatible with G003250A USB

I agree but in addition you should make sure 1) the donor spins with the patient PCB and 2) the donor slider topography matches the patient

I can see where some confusion may have arisen. Edited my original post so it's clear I am referring to the company mentioned at the beginning of the thread. Happy New Year all!

Sorry for the late reply Amarbir. Yes, ACE sent a referral check to us for 10% of what they charged the customer.

There is a nice long thread on the Deepspar forum on this topic, organized by manufacturer: *EDIT* For those who have access to the forum. Just pointing out another resource. http://deepspar.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=88

Patient: WD5000AAKX-00ERMA0 DHRNHT2CQB 10 Mar 2013 Thailand Head Map: 0 1 Donor: WD5000AAKX-75U6AA0 HGNCKT2MHB 11 Jul 2013 Thailand Head Map: 0 1 Patient had red coil windings, donor had purple

Jared, Are those dots contamination spots or difference in the topology of the slider pattern?

Clever, Larry, very clever. Jared, you threw me for a loop--you quoted the link I put up for my microscope. The link anyone reading this thread is going to want to check out for themselves is the one in Larry's post--he's the one with the hemorrhoid camera that he's using for data recovery...

Jared, those pics look exactly like what I see looking into my AmScope SW-3T24Z-FRL http://www.amscope.com/20x-40x-80x-trin ... aQodQJwPFQ I got a 5MP camera for it and my pics look like Larry's (good thing he circled that huge blob of contamination... don't think I would have noticed it...

True. Come to think of it, I never did get a technical explanation of what was wrong from ACE. From the symptoms I described to Serge at Deepspar, he is the one who suggested that the controller may be bad. I only sent my customer ACE's contact info and then received the referral check a few...

I probably should have "subscribed" to this thread. Sorry about the delayed response. Yes, the controller was bad and they were able to recover the data. They do have a partnership with Sandforce which apparently gets them proprietary access or something of that nature. Maybe they split what...

I agree... especially the sweet part. :lol:

This is my method of pulling the heads out with the ramp. In this pic, I'm holding the head assy at the top of the actuator axis and the ramp is suspended in the ends of the heads. The heads "squeeze" the ramp enough so it doesn't fall off. Once I have it out, I set the head/ramp assy down...

I've got a great idea in fact. Get the FW mods with a hot swap and create a Smart Donor. My 1TB WD1001FALS no data access case (which I'm still working on by the way) is now at a point where it has very similar symptoms as this case. I was never able to get it to come ready by itself and had...

Amarbir, I owe you a Kingfisher. This drive has been imaging on a port on my PC3k for 3 weeks and it's only read about 50 million sectors successfully. On top of that, it's got skipped sectors all over the place that don't come back after multiple passes or read-retries. A few days ago I...

It looks like there's even -less- space to work with inside that WD :shock: Bogus

Hah! Just had a pleasant experience with one of these. The family is Cheops. But that's not going to help you. This drive is Seagate's idea of giving us DR pros the middle finger. PC3K doesn't support it, it has a locked diagnostic port, and you can't back up the SA let alone read the ROM. I...

Thanks guys. Hopefully this thread is beneficial to someone down the road.

I had a run of cases from photographers who needed their photo shoots yesterday and just got back to this case today. I swapped upper & lower magnets and it still knocked twice and stayed spinning (and ID'd with 3.86GB) but the distinct rattling noise I referenced in my first post was gone. I...

Amarbir--I appreciate your input and advice! I will not be buying any more DFL tools but I do find my DFL-Seagate useful when my PC3k ports are tied up. I did fail to mention that I purchased the DE with my PC3k. 3 weeks later I wished I would have dropped another $2.5k for the Express and...

Hi Amarbir, I started with a set of used SD tools: Seagate, WD, Hitachi, and Maxtor. I ended up hard-wiring many connections to get rid of the flakiness. I then got a DDI4. After about a year, almost every time I started it I was getting an error like "DDI not found". Instead of sending it...

Follow-up: Slow fix didn't help with stability on this case. I've got most of the data now but had to do about 100 hot swaps with the smart donor on the Deepspar.

Thanks Jared! Had to wire up a SATA connector to bypass a USB bridge yesterday and this guide saved me having to slog through the manuals to find out where to enable on-the-fly decryption.

Thanks for the responses guys! I have changed head map to boot with only head 0 and only head 1 and no change in symptoms. I failed to mention earlier that with ONLY PCB or with drive attached to PCB, terminal output is the same. Terminal output is also the same with ONLY PCB of an identical...

Thanks Luke. Is the SSD flash memory chip specific to the HD? Since the issue follows the ROM on a different PCB, wouldn't that eliminate the SSD memory chip as causing the problem? Also, I was wrong when I said there was no terminal output. I just got the PC3k a week ago and apparently I...

Spins up, knocks twice, spins down, stays ready. EDIT 9/22: Distinct "rattle" during the 2 knocks Model and S/N detected properly, capacity is shown as 3.86GB (size of flash memory chip on PCB I assume), but firmware ver is shown as yyyyyyyy (with 2 dots over each y). Heads are good (has...

Cool! I guess all that matters in the end is it's another "W" on the scoreboard :D

Your question about which files are used to generate head map is a good question for Serge/Deepspar.

After you make a full head map with DDI, what does the media scan look like?

Good grief--you have time to do that on top of your data recovery business? :D We use Quickbooks Online. You can do all you listed above with it and access the database anywhere you have a connection to the internets. Even has a fancy phone app. It automatically assigns a case number and we...

Yeah, yeah. I should have done it a long time ago. Maybe I was challenging myself to see how long I could squeeeeeak by with my inferior tools :lol:

Tried a new head stack. Imaged for 5 minutes then wouldn't come ready again. I've finally given in--PC3K is on the way. I need a 3rd DDI anyway and the DE would work well as an alternative. Will post about how imaging goes using a virtual translator.

Thanks for all the responses guys! Well, this ended up being like 3 recoveries in one (gotta love those). First, the charred motor controller IC on a PCB with ROM embedded in MCU... Second, bad preamp and needed a head swap.... Third, drive would init and ID but no data access. Overcame the...

Thanks for the reply w.simon! For WD drives I'm using the SD tool. I do have the ability to edit head map in ROM. I also forgot to add that I was able to run a heads test on all heads individually and they had 0 read/write errors. Is there the possibility a translator regen could cause data...

This 1TB WD had a visibly blown-up motor control chip. With hot swap, drive stayed busy but stayed spinning. ROM is embedded in microcontroller chip. Replaced blown motor control chip and extracted ROM info. Programmed to donor PCB. Drive powered on and stayed busy. Figured preamp took...

Thanks for the helpful suggestion Jared! I haven't invested in a PC3K yet...I've been getting along well with a set of SD tools (which I modified to be more stable) for years and recently bought the DFL-Seagate tool. I've recently started to encounter cases where the PC3K would be more...

Jared, out of curiosity, did the slider pattern on your donors match the patient?

Toshiba 2.5" 4-head 2-platter from a laptop that was punched by an angry old man. Top platter surface has visible media damage, no contamination on pillow, only top slider had a little contamination which I was able to clean off. Same symptoms before & after slider cleaning: Drive makes a...

So I'm about 1.5 years late to the thread but I do have some info about this. About 9 months ago we got a SSD in with a Sandforce controller and were not able to get anywhere with it. Got the suggestion to contact this company (ACE Data Group, LLC: datarecovery.net) from Serge at Deepspar. To...

Formatter silicon power v.3.7.0.0: http://ouo.io/gDNjn See if that utility works! Sam

I have a 2.5" WD I'm currently working on that had platter wobble from a drop. I only discovered it after finding that a head swap didn't improve the situation. It's complicated by a ding in the top platter. A platter swap allowed me to image most of the data. Luckily the ding on the top...

I have opened several reading directly from the SA.

Correct.

Did you try removing the read-only attribute with DiskPart? https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=ht ... =214&w=639

I have a ST9750420AS 2.5" 2 platter that had contamination on all heads and metal flakes on all platters and all over the inside of the drive. I removed the platters and discovered that H2 (3rd platter surface up) has excessive media damage and top platter was barely beginning to develop media...

This will help the same way stripes on your shoes make you run faster.

Hi All, First, I've got to give props to Jared--grrreat message board! I've trolled around on it for a few days and like the "atomosphere". I was especially surprised by a post where someone asked what a donor drive is, obviously not taking 30 seconds to Google it or search the board, and...