FYI HM Broke Xing

[quasimodo]

FYI,

I thought I will share this:

Last week I had a Seagate ST980815A drive and the terminal output was the notorious:

Buzz
HM Broke Xing
HM Broke Xing

etc...

According to others on the forum this usually is media damage. According to my own experience I agree this has always been media damage for me in very case.

But...
not on this one. I inspected the media and it looked good. I replaced the heads and it was ready to rock & roll

At some point some bad areas, but 100% all important data recovered.

[dobrevjetser]

Hmmm, nice to know.
The exception to the rule

Dobre

[Russwinters]

I think the rule I always keep in mind is that these HM messages are almost of always the drive simply saying

"I can't read anything/this"


so it is a broad announcement. It just so happens that certain messages appear for certain failure modes, but in the end the message is similiar. "I cant read anything/this"


which is why looking into a HS is always a valid course of action. Obviously it is important to search for media damage, but a HS is almost always worth a shot as long as there is no serious visible media damage