I have a WD1600BEVT that was in a laptop which was driven over by a car, laptop was in its bag and switched off. Drive powered up and clicked so user brought it in.

I tested patient heads in donor and they are faulty. Can not see any platter damage or anything physical due to the car incident. Ordered a good matching donor, manufactured in same factory one day before patient. I did a successful headswap and drive powered up in PC3K but could not load SA. Loaded up drive with loader (from donor resource backup) and drive came ready, ID'd and was ready to image. Started up DE and made heads map. Started imaging and drive got to about 8 000 000 LBA then got an error and went BSY and stayed BSY. Powered the drive off and on and then drive would not initialise anymore.

Now I am unable to access the drive at all, I cannot even access ROM, nothing. Drive powers up, calibration noises are heard, then a loud 'sweep' as heads move to parking ramp but drive stays spinning and stays DRD DSC. Any attempt to communicate with the drive result in it going BSY. Starting up WD Marvell utility and drive goes BSY and stays that way, even in kernel mode.


Techno mode key
Techno mode key:........................ : Techno key error; unexpected error: Drive is not ready

RAM:
Drive is not ready
HDD Info reading........................ : HDDs RAM reading error - Drive is not ready

ROM:
Drive is not ready
ROM reading............................. : HDDs ROM reading error Data request error - Drive is not ready
Drive is not ready
ROM Firmware version.................... : Module ID 0B reading error Data request error - Drive is not ready

HDD Readiness timeout (50 ms)
Hard reset ...
View ROM information
Drive is not ready
HDDs ROM reading error Data request error - Drive is not ready

I put a donor PCB on drive and I get the same problem, I cannot even read ROM as I get techno key error. I would imagine that I should at least be able to read ROM info, however I can't even do this.

If anything were to die whilst it was imaging after headswap I would think it would have been the heads, but now I can't even access anything on the PCB.

I'm stumped... any ideas welcome.

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Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town

Let me add that working with just the PCB (patient and/or donor) not attached to HDA, I am also not able to access ROM or any info, get techno key error.

_________________
Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town

Restart your machine and if you have a same problem, ROM/PCB probably got corrupted.

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www.datarecoveryne.com

And also can test PC3000 with any other WD drive to determine if it is just that drive that is faulty or the problem is consistent with other drives. And go from there.

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

I left the drive alone overnight and today it powered up and I can access ROM and work with it in PC3K utility, so whatever was wrong at the time has 'cleared' itself. One of the heads is dead though so will need another donor.

_________________
Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town