Hi there,

I was working on an older Toshiba drive (MK1517GAP / HDD2157 G ZF01 T). The PCB needed replacing due to deliberate tampering / destruction of the original. The donor was accepted and access to the SA & LBA were immediate. I was under the impression that all Toshiba drives (even older models) had adaptive data contained on the PCB which needed to be replaced. On this series there is no external ROM chip, and I presume any such information would be in the main BGA chip.

The disk is heavily degraded, but a reasonable clone was taken, with ECC nearly always on. However, the FAT file system is in very bad shape, in some case cases giving the encrypted like folder and file names for data, and in other cases folders and files are OK.

Thanks for any comments,
John

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CDR - Manchester Data Recovery Services
0161 408 4857
http://www.cheadledatarecovery.co.uk/

Been a while since I've seen an old Toshiba but if it were adaptive related, you wouldn't get access to the drive at all. Have you tried new heads and/or clearing g-list?

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Data Recovery Ireland

Yes, no access at all - that's what I would have presumed as per all other adaptive data on Toshiba drives (and other manufacturers for that matter). Consequently I presumed that either due to the age of the drive there are no adaptives, or that I just got lucky.

This disk has been at another recovery company(s), which led to the deliberate damage to the PCB (not the original fault with the disk). Consequently I am not inclined to spend any more time on it as I don't know what else could have been changed.

Thanks for the response,
John