Blizzard wrote:
jono-ats wrote:
It's an SMR drive. The secondary translator isn't working, involving modules 189 & 190. Checksum errors are NORMAL for these modules if using the PC3K.
This +
We have not recovered one yet that has arrived all zeros, if anyone has, it would be good to know so we can refer those cases. If the drive fails while it's in your possession and you have a backup of the original translator modules referenced by Jon then these can sometimes be recovered. Some of the procedures you may have used on older (non SMR) WD drives could render these drives blank, so be careful.
One more thing, the external version of WD SMR drives support TRIM. Fun times ahead
It is possible to do this drives, but fundamental recovery methodic should be comletely changed. Backuping all SA now is not enough and won't much help later.
Replacing heads on them in 90% channces ends up with blank user space (second layer translator automaticaly updating). But this doesnt mean it is impossible to do recovery, just extra significant things should be added to whole procedure.