Head failure pattern diagnostics

[jono-ats]

I'm working on an older Maxtor 250 GB (6L250M0). Head 4 is bad up through about LBA 75000000. it's worse at the beginning and then gradually improves. It's fine from 75 million to the end.

This seems like an adaptive deviation problem.

The head is not uniformly bad. But is there a good chance that more data could be recovered by changing it? Or is this more likely a pattern of media corruption or damage?

I see this kind of thing fairly often, but haven't been compelled to do head swaps (unless the head is uniformly bad).

Thoughts?

[BlackST]

Everything could be, a malfunctioning preamp, adaptive problems, weakening head... If you can image - slowly- go. Otherwise try another headstack.

[beto]

Hello jono, i tried head exchange at 6L500R0 the last year , because got same case like u at my case was not only a region was more regions, i did the exchage,and was possible to read more sectors but not 100% im think there are surface problems at some models, maxtor and seagate too, where even´s doing a head swap the bad sectors remains

Regards

[BlackST]

Head parameters should be recalculated when doing HS. This is the toughest part...

[harddrivespecialist]

Those Maxtors had many problems with surface. Replacing heads won't help unfortunately. Patience is a best friend here...

[BlackST]

Those Maxtors had many problems with surface. Replacing heads won't help unfortunately. Patience is a best friend here...

Disagree. Most of the times erasing / do SS gives a working HDD.

[harddrivespecialist]

Most of the times erasing / do SS gives a working HDD.

To repair a drive it could work, because it will adjust adaptive data.
As far as I understand, we are discussing data recovery solutions.

[jono-ats]

Yes, this is a data recovery project . . . .



I haven't had much luck running SS. Apparently there are some tips and techniques that aren't always apparent in the support literature. I'd love to know more so that I could fix some of the bad drives I have for smart hot swap capability, or just to get rid of some extras.

I assume that if SS was successful post-recovery, it would either adjust the adaptive parameters for that head, or else would block out the bad areas on the surface. At this point I don't know what I've got.

[BlackST]

If you only rely on the product literature (aka PC3000 or other tools documentation)...

[jono-ats]

Yup. That's my predicament . . .

Did you figure it out on your own?

[pepe]

Hi,

I had such case with a 2 head calypso. H0 was weak and could not read the first half of the data area, then in ~1million LBA it turned into a completely working one
So I could read the second 40G with the original head.
After swapping the MHA, I could access the first part too. But that head swap is tricky, especially for a calypso with 6 heads...

pepe