gtd4242 wrote:
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.
Disable background media scan on module 02. Clear RE-LO. This will most likely allow you to image/clone the drive without the mentioned issue.
If the drive still does the same decrese the TIMEOUT value for sector READ. Make it timeout very fast on slow sectors so you can skip them without the drive doing that power cycle sort of thing.
This should allow you to image / clone without the issue. Also disable cache. Don't use read lookhaead at all. This will help.
If all the above fails try PIO mode. It will be a lot slower but if you use it on that bad region only you should be ok.
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