ST2000LM007 Head Swap

[drmoast]

Hi,

I run a repair company for notebooks and we are starting to dig into data recovery.
I have been reading the board for a while and now have my first case that I am stuck with. I hope you can help me

I have a question that I hope you can help me with: We have a ST2000LM007 here which had the heads stuck on the platters. We released the heads and parked them on the ramp but after connecting the hard drive, the head cycled between the parking position and the ramp in an infinite loop.

So we sourced a donor drive and swapped the head stack assembly, but unfortunately this did not work. The drive starts, the heads move but R-Studio and Disk Drill cannot see it. I then took the pcb from the donor drive and installed it into the patient. Now the drive is recognized, but still cannot be accessed. To make sure we didn’t damage the heads, I swapped the hsa back to the original drive and the drive works just fine, so apparently the swap was okay.

Now I checked the drives and saw that the patient is P/N 1R8174-566 from MAR16 and the donor drive ist P/N 1R8174-568 from NOV16. Is that enough difference to cause that behaviour? And most importantly: Would a head swap with the correct head work out of the box, or does it need any additional adaption to do a swap on this drive?

Sorry to bother you with all those questions but I am really stuck here, also because I cannot find the exact same drive.

Thanks for your help!

[drmoast]

Anyone?

[pepe]

Hello,

if you wanna get into DR start playing with your own spares rather than client drives. There's a price to pay, it does not come easy.

[drmoast]

Hi,

thanks for you reply. This is not a client drive but our own drive that we want data from.

However, I don't want to be rude, but I didn't ask about how to practice but I asked specifically if a head swap from two identical drives would work out of the box. A simple yes or no (and why) would help me a lot.

Again, I don't want to sound rude but I really thought I could ask a question here.

[hdd_sand]

Hi,

thanks for you reply. This is not a client drive but our own drive that we want data from.

However, I don't want to be rude, but I didn't ask about how to practice but I asked specifically if a head swap from two identical drives would work out of the box. A simple yes or no (and why) would help me a lot.

Again, I don't want to sound rude but I really thought I could ask a question here.

Hi,

I am new to the board, but I agree that the approval rule is poison for a quick and efficient discussion, as too many days pass until an answer can be seen. Most of us have customers waiting for a recovery, so time is money and the delay caused by waiting for answers could cost business.

So what is it?

[hdd_sand]

Hi,

I run a repair company for notebooks and we are starting to dig into data recovery.
I have been reading the board for a while and now have my first case that I am stuck with. I hope you can help me

I have a question that I hope you can help me with: We have a ST2000LM007 here which had the heads stuck on the platters. We released the heads and parked them on the ramp but after connecting the hard drive, the head cycled between the parking position and the ramp in an infinite loop.

So we sourced a donor drive and swapped the head stack assembly, but unfortunately this did not work. The drive starts, the heads move but R-Studio and Disk Drill cannot see it. I then took the pcb from the donor drive and installed it into the patient. Now the drive is recognized, but still cannot be accessed. To make sure we didn’t damage the heads, I swapped the hsa back to the original drive and the drive works just fine, so apparently the swap was okay.

Now I checked the drives and saw that the patient is P/N 1R8174-566 from MAR16 and the donor drive ist P/N 1R8174-568 from NOV16. Is that enough difference to cause that behaviour? And most importantly: Would a head swap with the correct head work out of the box, or does it need any additional adaption to do a swap on this drive?

Sorry to bother you with all those questions but I am really stuck here, also because I cannot find the exact same drive.

Thanks for your help!

Yes, but you will need pro tools to manipulate SA to accept the new parts - R-Studio or Disk Drill will not be able to clone this type of drives, ST2000LM007 are PITA to recover. I recommend to outsource this to a DR company with the expertise and pro tools to handle this type of drive.... Just my 2 cents

[scratchy]

out of interest do you have a clean air cabinet/clean room where you do your internal work.

[drmoast]

So what is it?

Erm, two different topics?! Me saying that the approval rule was poison for a business needing to serve customers is one thing. This thread and this drive is another thing.

Besides, am I on trial here or is this a board to exchange help and knowledge?

@scratchy
Yes, we have a ISO5/Class 100 horizontal laminar flow bench located in a ISO 6/Class 1000 clean room.

@hdd_sand
Thanks for the answer. So does that mean even if it is a head stack assembly from the exact identical drive I need adaptation? This I need PC3000 for right?

[lifeguarddubai]

Yes you need Pc3000 or MRt for importing Head Adaptives...

[drmoast]

Yes you need Pc3000 or MRt for importing Head Adaptives...

Thank you lifeguard, for answering my question!

[msurgeon]

Unfortunately, not much sympathy is given to novices here. Mark it up to the arrogance of experts. To answer your questions: a) most likely your donor heads were compatible but there is often platter damage when heads are stuck to platters. Unsticking the heads requires some finesse and still often results in media damage which is likely what you are experiencing. b) you can't just switch PCBs from a similar drive because there is ROM information on the original which must be copied to the donor c) the adaptive data that was referred to in a previous post is sometimes necessary to be transferred from the head donor's ROM to the patient's. For this you do need specialized equipment. However, I must admit that I don't think is a factor in your situation. My guess is that you have media damage which often can be the end of the story.

[pepe]

My 2 cents: starting with such drive is not a good decision. There is a learning curve on which you just started to go backwards.

[BGman]

even if it is a head stack assembly from the exact identical drive I need adaptation? This I need PC3000 for right?

All head stacks are different , so every modern HDD uses adaptives to work with the heads. The change of the head stack requires change of the adaptives as well. You don't need PC3000, but it might help.....
Many people do the job by useing only COM port terminal and maybe one day you'll become one of them!

[Strecker]

My 2 cents: starting with such drive is not a good decision. There is a learning curve on which you just started to go backwards.

What drive would you start with pepe?

[labtech]

My 2 cents: starting with such drive is not a good decision. There is a learning curve on which you just started to go backwards.

What drive would you start with pepe?

Working drives without major issues. Some bad sectors are fine.
For F3 architecture, any low capacity laptop drives, ideally 1 platter and 2 heads. The more different they are in other specifications, even though they are the same model and family, the more incompatible they typically become.

[jono-ats]

Unfortunately, not much sympathy is given to novices here. Mark it up to the arrogance of experts.

I don't suppose that so-called "experts" are arrogant, as much as they are really tired of seeing the results of attempts and interventions gone bad.

These Seagate drives seem to be prone to media damage; the service area is locked out, and they are a general PITA to work on.

We recently had a client with two 1 TB drives -- he thought he could just swap the platters and what a mess he made. He totally screwed himself (or his client) and unnecessarily so. When you see this every day, you become reluctant to give anything but answers that won't get someone in trouble.

Maybe working on this drive is a little like learning cardiac catheterization. If you learn under the direction of a doctor in the proper setting, the patient will probably be OK. If you go to the internet to learn how to do it, the patient is probably going to die from the procedure or a complication.

One of the things you have to be sure of is that the slider patterns of Seagate HSAs must match. If those match up, then you may have a firmware issue as the others pointed out. We haven't had much trouble with heads compatibility on this series, but we haven't done a lot of them (yet).

Oh yes. If you don't know what you are doing with the firmware, it's very easy to brick this drive with little hope or chance of subsequent recovery.

As Pepe said, this is a really bad model to start with.