Hello All,

I have been working on this drive for a few days now and I seem to be getting nowhere. I have full access to the SA and can read and write modules perfectly. However, there is no logical access at all. All attempts to read a sector result in ERR/ABR errors. There was some SA modules that had errors on them which were repaired and the SA checks as good. I manually verified the content on all the modules required for logical access.

My assumption is that the PCB is bad but that does not seem to jive with being able to access and r/w the SA.

I tried translator regeneration and still have the same issue.

I am not sure what to try next other than PCB swap and HOT Swap. I am waiting on the donor now.

Any ideas?

Is this with or without head swap?

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Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Without. No changes have been made to the internals.

Likely translator is not loading correctly.
Initializing the drive off of one of the system heads only will help.

_________________
Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Altering the head map to only head 0 or 1 does not fix the issue. I tried regenerating the translator and also nothing.

I did a module 03 recovery and got
Module 03 recovery
Format data reading..................... : Ok
FMT TPI set error Device Error Detected: "VSC ERR W R GAP INFO NOT AVAILABLE"

Which is interesting.

I tried a module 3 recovery and got this....

Module 03 recovery
Format data reading..................... : Ok
FMT TPI set error Device Error Detected: "VSC ERR W R GAP INFO NOT AVAILABLE"

Sounds like heads could be bad then. Is it out of an external drive? And what did the customer say may have led to failure?

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Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Yes, out of a my book external that was sitting on a desk.

And the customer has no idea at all, right? No drops, no signs of freezing or random disconnects or inability to browse, etc, right? Facepalm.

SMART looks clean?

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Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Smart looks clean. What really gets me is that the W R head distance means it cannot read the microjogs? or some other adaptive setting? That is what has me confused

Have you run a heads test?

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PC Image Data Recovery
www.pcimage.co.uk

does it detected with full ID ?
or you are accessing SA only when you block the SA access ?

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Data Recovery Pakistan

It detects with full ID. No issues there. I read and wrote to the SA on both head 0 and head 1 with no issues.

What about the other heads? Translator will not initialise properly if a suspect head is detected.

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PC Image Data Recovery
www.pcimage.co.uk

Heads test
Cylinder to test........................ : -10
Heads to test........................... : 0,1,2,5,6,7
Test every head......................... : no more then 1 min.
Head 0.................................. : Ok
Head 1.................................. : Ok
Head 2.................................. : Ok
Head 5.................................. : Ok
Head 6.................................. : Ok
Head 7.................................. : Ok

Fair enough.

Did you try the “slow responding fix” ?

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PC Image Data Recovery
www.pcimage.co.uk

Yes I did, nothing as well.

Has it been to another data recovery company? Hope it was not sabotaged or something.

_________________
Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

As far as I can tell it has not been opened aside from myself. Its just strange, very strange.

Could be that some scumbag has done something to it, like writing non-native 4x adaptives to it or something?

Worth asking if it has been to another DR company and their quote declined?

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
www.pcimage.co.uk