I have got this seagate Pharoh desktop 500GB disk ST3500413AS / FW - JC4B .
It was staying busy , I have cleared SMP flags now drive gives DRD- DSC and sector access as well . I could image D and E drives with speed of aprox.40mb/sec (I have kept read speed low to 66mb/sec) .I have recovered aprox. 269 GB data as well.
However when I try to read C drive ,I experience lots of defects and often drives goes to not ready / busy state.
What could be the issue and what will be my professional safest and technically right plan.
So far I have not shown any impatience and have not fired any defect list clearing commands. I haven't touched anything except clearing smart .
Can someone pls. suggest what will be problem in this part of drive or heads while reading particular parts only.
Here are snaps showing drive diagnostics.

I suspect AltList being full...

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Thanks a lot Pepe
I think I will have to transfer defects to Glist first and then regenerate translator (pls. correct me )
Is it Seagate Sector Access Interruption issue ?
Its nicely explained in this MRT article -
http://en.mrtlab.com/solutions-to-seaga ... n-part-one. Its bit complex process I haven't done this before.

just erase AltList, that's all
don't touch the translator it is fine.
pepe

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Thanks pepe
I will erase altlist and report outcome.
Here is entire firmware backup -
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xa37H0 ... sp=sharing

Unfortunately there is no improvements in symptoms even after clearing Alt list .
Is there anything else I can try.

Unfortunately drive has lost readiness and sector access ,it stays busy.

You do now have translator failure caused by the bad heads.
IMO you need to swap head before doing any more work.
https://blog.acelaboratory.com/pc-3000- ... error.html

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Thanks ddrecovery
I must admit subject of my topic was no mistake , but I ignored it and made mistakes in panic
Actually I was of opinion that since I have multiple FW backups I can revert back to original state ,unfortunately that is not happening.
Another reason is I have been successful to recover almost 269 GB of data only data left is from C drive.
I have tried random solutions not firstly understanding exact issue but I am confused -
If there was originally head issue then how can I was able to recover such large data without single bad sector.
Now the same disk with same heads is showing large defects for starting part.
I also dont know whether any firmware changes will cause head failure.
Initially when disk came it was having SMP flags issue which I have cleared.
Now reason for disk again getting busy is somewhere else might be in NRG list /translator or G list
Though disk is not spinning down ,a strange whistle type tone is generated for some time after powering.
Now I am restoring system files from backup.Hope it will be successful and drive will give DRD DSC again,

I have been successful to restore all system files and disk has been restored to previous state with full access.
It was a close shave.
ddrecovery - Since I can write system files back any issue with heads can be ruled out now.

To be honest I dont know design and working of heads, nor I know how they functions fully.
Here both Head 0 and 1 are behaving normally for D and E drives , for C drive Head 0 is slow but reading ( 200-300KB/sec)
However Head 1 refuses to read at all.
That means same heads are behaving differently for different parts of same platter
Strange . I have heard that those super gurus like pepe / doomer know some secret technique to boost signals from head 1 or some other manipulations (increasing current). May be part of the platter is more degraded than rest of the surface.

Head is weak or contaminated. the easiest way is replacing the MHA, if you don't know how to check if it is weak or contaminated, not to mention cleaning it. There are 2 factors for slow reading: towards lower LBAs (higher track radius) the tangential velocity is higher, so is the flying height of the slider. Another factor is the data rate, which is also higher at higher radius, which can be difficult for a weak head to read.
pepe

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hi pepe and friends
Thanks a lot for all your help.
This disk has proven everyone wrong. I have been successful to pull out all data from C drive as well.
I haven't done anything afterwards ,only after restoring back all 29 system files has done all the magic.

it was probably due to contamination which may have been blown off uppon head park-load cycles. I can't imagine any sysfile that would cause slow reading on one head. All adaptives are in flash.

pepe

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Why are there only 23m read sectors?

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no, there are 13m....
i have overlooked that.

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Guys
As I have mentioned earlier I have already recovered data from D and E drives.
hese 13m sectors are from C drive profile only (6.63GB)
pepe -- Since all adaptives are in rom ,does drives firmware (off platter) plays any role in head behaviour ? That means all head tuning modifications (if possible) must be done in rom only.
Still I cant read all sectors from head 1 but I think its damage to that part of the platter responsible.
I am happy at the end it was successful.

The drive has bad sectors at those specific areas, and i suspected the AltList being full (because you said it stays bsy sometimes). The whole case is pretty much simple and is not worth more than 2 posts. We can't diag the drive for you remotely, our oppinions are based on the info you provide. You said it reads at ~200KB/s, when reading the 1st partition (one of the heads, the other one did not read at all) while the other 2 reads ok.
It is you who is in the best position to draw consequences from the symptoms experienced, we have no idea wether there were sectors read fast and only some sectors made it slow or all of them were slow, etc.
At least, it's been cloned and you have a happy client.

pepe

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yes you are right this must be very basic for you experienced guys.However for a novice like me view is altogether different --
1) First it was client disk having important data --- any experimentation on my part and silly mistakes might have made a big loss to him with no fault of him.
2) Its learning for me , next time if same case arrive I could do some part of my own. I understood reason for drive getting busy is in Alt list being full . etc.
This has boosted my confidence level,
Still I dont understand following -

App code
cert code
how seagate drive is initilized -- I read process starts from ROM and then it reads modules from platters but I want full details.
Role of adaptives.
Role of main modules
overlays
Alt list - NRG list - is it safe to directly delete them
translation recover or regenerate
role of system files - which file to work for specific issue
list of all known bugs and there solution -- like SMP flag /No Host FSI etc.

where can I get this information. All details are not in pc3000 manuals,
I have read that HPWlab has released some book having this information.

Hello,
The Approach For This Case Should Have Been ,Repair Firmware " Which You Did " , Then Recover Inner Partitions Drive D And E " Which You Did " , Then Focus of Drive C Thats On Outer Tracks Sections ,This Section of The Hard Drive suffers from maximum Platter damage ,So you have to fine tune read parameters in DE and In First Pass Read As Much Data As You Can Then Keep Tightening The parameters to read more and more sections .As far as Extreme guru level people are concerned in DR they are a handful ,But the cases that they can do that people like us cannot do are also handful .As far as Improvement of head read write capablity is concerned a simple approach would be use a tool that has such settings ,dfl has it . You can also check jared my friends forum he manually did this and was sweet enough to post ,The defect lists should not be touched if you can avoid it

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Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com