Toshiba MK4021GAS - Head swap

[yco]

Hello everybody.

I have a hard drive that comes up to ready state but while imaging it behaves very strange - shows a lot of CRC errors but jumps quickly throught them, and when I restart imaging it reads properly some of them and so on (each restart gives better result). The thing is that it goes very slow (about 5% a day) so to get full (or almost full) image I'd have to spend a month to complete.

I thought that this could be a head, so I got a drive of same model and manufacture country but after swapping it just knocks badly. I put heads back into original drives and both come up fine.

Now my question - is that a head problem, and if so why isn't it working? What are other requirements for head swap in TOSHIBA? Could that be faulty RAM chip?

Greetings,
yco.

[pcimage]

Probably bad motor/bearing.

[shahij]

Probably bad motor/bearing.

Sounds me too.

[HDD Spaz]

Its bad motor. When the disk is repowered motor gets up to speed for very short while. You have 3 options.

1. Heat Bearing or Move Platters
2. Image for the next 6 months
3. Send to a pro


If data is important, option 3 should be your course of action.

ps.

A data recovery engineers best friend is a Toshiba

[yco]

OK then, will give it a try.
I did platter swap quite few times with Toshibas and indeed they are very easy for that.
Will try it and post a feedback.

[yco]

So I have news - swapped platters but still same thing. I replaced RAM chip and now the drive works perfectly. Taken full image now with not a single CRC error.

[HDD Spaz]

Thats the first case I have heard of involving faulty 'ram' chip. Maybe you got lucky with the disk initialization.

[pcimage]

Me too, never heard of a faulty RAM chip causing this problem.

[hddguy]

Please let us know where this RAM chip is located?

[beto]

Hy hddguy RAM should be IC21 well im checking on a 60GB disk.

Regards

[yco]

That is exactly IC21. In my case it is HYNIX HY57V161610DTC-8 16Mbit SDRAM chip.