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Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
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WD 3200AAKS Constantly Power Cycles In Certain Areas

May 5th, 2018, 13:48

I have a WD 3200AAKS that reads fine on all heads from about 18% into the drive and beyond. That first 18% though is a nightmare. The drive will read a sector, cycle the power, and then read the next sector...then the next sector it cycles the power and reads the sector after that. I've tried every DDI setting I can think of. I don't believe it's an issue with the drive physically. I have 3 of my PC3K machines tied up right now so I can't check it yet, but I'm wondering if it's a system area issue with one of the modules. Anyone else seen this? Like I said, it's just that first 18% of the drive that it hits areas where it hangs and cycles the power over and over. Beyond that point, it reads just fine at normal speeds.

Re: WD 3200AAKS Constantly Power Cycles In Certain Areas

May 5th, 2018, 14:04

Pinclite? Just had a case in like this, it came in from a dealer and suspect it had been seriously messed with, there were 'issues' with quite a few A-S critical mods, after lots of time re-building from copy1, 2 and making good, HDD came ready absolutely no issues and cloned >90MB per sec, save for <100 unread UNC sectors, from memory, in my case mods 4Xh, 31h, 03h, 04h seemed to have 'issues'.

Re: WD 3200AAKS Constantly Power Cycles In Certain Areas

May 8th, 2018, 15:19

I've done all that was suggested and this drive is just crazy. It works fine and then it hits those areas in that first 18% and no matter what you do, it constantly power cycles almost every sector.

Re: WD 3200AAKS Constantly Power Cycles In Certain Areas

May 8th, 2018, 15:27

Spildit wrote:Try to replace the PCB as well just in case ...



I was just about to suggest that, have seen quite a few Tornado drives that wouldn’t read the first ~33% and turned out the PCB was at fault.

Re: WD 3200AAKS Constantly Power Cycles In Certain Areas

May 8th, 2018, 15:45

IMO, most likely FW problem than PCB failure.

Re: WD 3200AAKS Constantly Power Cycles In Certain Areas

May 8th, 2018, 15:54

Drive is PINCLITE.

Re: WD 3200AAKS Constantly Power Cycles In Certain Areas

May 9th, 2018, 9:34

Thanks for all the feedback folks. Going to try and swap PCB's at some point today and will update. Now that I think of it, I had an issue almost like this years ago and it was the PCB.

Re: WD 3200AAKS Constantly Power Cycles In Certain Areas

May 9th, 2018, 14:36

Well, the PCB was the culprit. It's imaging perfectly now. What a crazy job. I just never thought initially, since everything seemed to be good to go past that 18% mark, that there could be an issue with the PCB. It just threw me for a loop at how perfect everything operated past that point. Definitely logging this resolution away.

Re: WD 3200AAKS Constantly Power Cycles In Certain Areas

May 9th, 2018, 15:02

Glad it worked for you. :good:

Re: WD 3200AAKS Constantly Power Cycles In Certain Areas

May 9th, 2018, 15:49

Nice :-)

Re: WD 3200AAKS Constantly Power Cycles In Certain Areas

May 9th, 2018, 17:23

Thanks! And thanks for all the input and suggestions.
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