WD Smart Hotswap Without Tracks

[Jared]

It looks like Ace Labs figured out how to do a smart hotswap without writing all the tracks to the donor

Looks like you just need the following resources to be able to get a drive ready to read data:

Copy of ROM;
Copy of adaptive settings from ROM module ID=47h;
Copy of 1xh overlay modules from SA (11h .. 1Fh);
Copy of adaptive settings (modules ID=4xh) from SA;
Copy of Zone allocation table (module ID=03h) from SA;
Copy of Translator (module ID=31h) from SA;

Here's the full tutorial from ACE: http://blog.acelaboratory.com/pc-3000-h ... rives.html

This can be very useful for jobs where there's a lot of damage to the tracks making it impossible to read them all. I've got one here now that the heads died before I could get all the tracks, but I've got the modules at least. Hope it'll help, this stupid drive refuses to ID even after head replacement (I think it's an issue with module 2 not reading now).

 

[jol]

thanks for the sharing

 

[Jared]

And now in video form:

[youtube]q1fRW9pJDYw[/youtube]

 

[w.simon]

Hum it's like a write of data recovery key modules on a firmware donnor ?

Will check that again after had some rest

Regards

 

[Jared]

Hum it's like a write of data recovery key modules on a firmware donnor ?

Will check that again after had some rest

Regards

It's just like the smart hotswap method where you write all the tracks to the donor and use it to load the FW before hotswapping. Only it's just using certain key modules.