Hitachi HTS541616J9SA00 only reading a few sectors

[quasimodo]

Hello everyone,

I have a Hitachi HTS541616J9SA00 drive here that puzzles me a bit. The drive initializes, and becomes ready, Firmware all modules are ok. NVRAM is good. I can read and write to SA with no problems. Heads appear to be fine. first 40K sectors are readable, then I just get busy and UNC(forward/backward). P-List has 8818 entries and G-List has 1234 entries. Smart is good. Tried clearing P-List, G-List and smart but no difference. Sounds like Translator problem, any ideas?

Thanks!

[pepe]

try imaging at different locations. I suspect it has a radial 'scratch' that causes some bads on each cyl on some heads.
it is also possible that one head is weak.
U can sort these out by checking the pattern of the bad sectors.

pepe

[quasimodo]

Pepe,

You are correct after jumping about 100K I can now image the drive. First 100K and for some reason last 50K on the drive are unreadable, interesting to have bad media at the beginning and the end of the drive. Maybe the drive got knocked. I rule out a weak head since the drive now images fine, at least in the middle

Thanks my friend, I owe you a beer and some gulasch, put it on my tab.

[drc]

So it doesn't make the normal scratchy sound?

[quasimodo]

So it doesn't make the normal scratchy sound?

No scratchy sound. The drive runs quietly. I still would like to get the first 100K, but i have not found any settings that would allow DE to image them (will try without checksum tomorrow) Interestingly enough I can view every sector with SD tool for Hitachi. Does anyone know how their Hitachi tool accesses the data area? On this particular drive I would like to see how DC, Atola and Deepspar perform.

This would be a good time for the developers to provide a Demo unit, hint hint

[drc]

Interesting. I did have a desktop Seagate with obvious platter wobble issues the other day that imaged fine except for the very beginning and the very end (I guess it was still within tolerance except at the extreme edges).