Hi all.

Maybe somebody can tell me if it's possible to save the data in this disk using software only (I can't afford a PC3000 or any repair company).

The disk is a WD 1600JD SATA in an Asus P4C800-E Deluxe board (no RAID, just plain ATA mode). It was working fine up to two weeks ago when my system crashed while running a virus check and eMule at the same time. The antivirus program (Nod32) is set to ignore the folders eMule is using and the computer is connected to a UPS. So it was not a power shortage problem. Just software crash.

Since then, I cannot read the disk to back it up.

WD Diagnostics and many other utilities I tried, cannot fix the drive.

MHDD processes and displays about 7 lines of correct sectors followed by about 2.5 lines of UNCR sectors.
This repeated for as long as I let it.

Using other tools like Partition Table Doctor 3.0, it seems that MFT is readable but it's copy is not.
I can write the good MFT copy over the bad one with no errors but when I read it again, the drive gives an error.
This causes file recovery programs to either not see the drive or take a very long time to scan it. PTD 3.0 for example, took a whole week to partly scan one partition (the drive is split into two equal partitions of 80GB).

Its cable works fine if I connect it to another drive so that cannot be the problem.

Where would the error be in a case like this? It's too symmetrical and occurs across most of the drive as far as I can tell. The drive is very quiet with no clicking or any funny sounds so I doubt it's mechanical.

It seems to write over the bad sectors but not read them. Is that a chip problem?
Would it help if I could locate a similar drive (very difficult here) and managed to switch their boards?

How would I go about trying to save at least some of the data in it? Can any programs back up the drive quickly ignoring the errors?

Thanks in advance for any help and please excuse the beginner's questions.

Hi,

the drive has reading problems from one head. Either it is dirty or failing.
this is a work for experts, so if U have a 95% backup, I suggest just let it go.

pepe

Thank you pepe and sorry for taking this long to answer.

Considering the regularity of the errors, your explanation sounds right.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to backup the data yet.

I came close with HD Duplicator. I had it scan one of the two partitions. It flagged most of the files as OK and a few of them with errors.
I could select the ones I wanted but couldn't start up the copy process because the program was still scanning. It was stuck forever in some bad sector and refused to be stopped.

Now I have to find some other recovery tool that lets me set the number of retries before it gives up.

Also, maybe somebody knows of some utility to do the following:

Read the disk, ignore the CRC errors and write back the same data correcting their CRC only.

The reason for the above:

Before this current problem I had a brand-new WD SE16 1500KS. This disk was getting errors after a power-cycle.
WD Diagnostics gave a couple of errors claiming that the disk had to be replaced. Nevertheless, the disk worked after that until the next power-cycle that caused the exact same errors.
I got a similar disk and copied the data to it. The new disk checked OK and the older one had the same errors.
I wrote zeros on the older disk and checked it again. The disk was now clean!!

If it was only a CRC error and WD Diagnostics claimed it had to be replaced, maybe I just have a similar CRC error on the 1600JD.

By the way, what to do with the older SE16? The disk is fine now but how trustworthy is it? I can't imagine the dealer replacing it since it now works.

Thanks.