Toshiba Head Swap Experiences

pclab

Moderator
Hi

We should also start a STICKY for this on each brand.

Here's one case I made this week.
Nothing compatible bout them but it work fine.
Patient had 2 heads and donor 3 heads.
 

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Jared

Administrator
Staff member
Sure, I converted this to a sticky. (I also modified the thread title to keep it consistent with the others)

I'm surprised that worked! That's quite a stretch. What prompted you to attempt using this drive?
 

pclab

Moderator
Well, the size of the drive (same size), the start of the model (MK16...) and the fact that it was the only one available in stock. Why not try?? ehehehhe
 

MasterT

New member
Lately i had trouble matching toshiba donor drives but now i have a really odd one.

Following the rules found on http://www.donordrives.com/blog/matching-guide#toshiba it's a perfect match.

Yet it's not working. Patient drive only has one good head so i imaged half of the drive.

Donor drive has both heads ok so i changed them to read the other half.

After swap both drives are clicking. So i swapped back and they both work exactly like before.

Can it be that the code on the side sticker is the code for matching the heads?

Only that code is diffrent and the drives S/N.

How do you match toshiba drives to make them work.

I also had problems with MQ01ABD100 in 3 cases which cannot match a donor so i was just wondering.
 

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Jared

Administrator
Staff member
I find it highly unlikely that those heads aren't a match. I rarely ever match Toshiba drives so closely and they almost always work first try.

Perhaps something else is going on here. I'd try putting the heads back in again but pay more attention to the physical installation. Some things I've seen that caused confusion like this in the past:

1. Forgetting to remove the second rubber gasket and accidentally having two (preventing the preamp from touching the PCB fully)
2. Heads not positioned on ramp correctly and unable to move freely.
3. A loose screw stuck to the magnet blocking the heads from moving fully.
4. A broken magnet

If all else fails, try another donor, but that one really should work.
 

MasterT

New member
I tried with different donor that's no so close match, this one works but it reads very very slow and with lots of errors.
 

Jared

Administrator
Staff member
It could be just a lot of media damage. Have you tried using read by utility mode? Perhaps there's something else going on making it timeout before reading.
 
MasterT":331ni08r said:
I tried with different donor that's no so close match, this one works but it reads very very slow and with lots of errors.
I have a Toshiba hdd. It has very much bad sectors . Not head swapped.
I am deleting p list glist and clear smart in every 30-40 GB lol. Best way ever I found till now for this case. Also extreemly slow recovery . Somerimes 45 MB/s mostly around 1 mb/s .
Lols
 
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