HD321KJ with scratches on Platter(s)

[D_R]

Hi,

I have here a Samsung HD321KJ Drive. The client said, that his PC felt to the floor. After the crash, he was able to use the HDD for some days, after that his machine crashed with a Bluescreen and the HDD stated to make some clicking sounds.

After I powered the drive on, I get these errors:

Code:

UF 3 1stGrayErr
H: +00001
UF 3 1stGrayErr
H: +00002
UF 3 1stGrayErr
H: +00003
...
H: +00003
UF 3 1stGrayErr
WriteSctLog -- buffer not valid
LED 13 0000


Changing Head Map didn't work.

So I opened the drive in a clean room and saw some scratches near the parking area on the top platter.

I have a donor drive here, but can I do anything? Where is the SA on the disk? And how can I prevent the new head gets damaged by the scratches?

[data-medics]

It's game over in my opinion. The underside probably looks just as bad. New heads will die instantly on power on.

I'm sure someone will come on here to argue that it's still possible and they can do it with their "secret platter resurfacing technology", but IMHO they're just hoping to make a quick buck on a evaluation fee and will really do nothing with it.

[pcimage]

I'd have a go without evaluation fee, have recovered similar.

It would be pretty expensive though, due to the amount of time I'd have to put into it.

[Blizzard]

I have done this on a low density Maxtor in the past. It was a friends drive so I experimented over time. In the end I just cut a mailing label into strips and built up the limiter until the heads could not reach the parking area. SA was damaged but I recovered the modules needed to make a smart hot-swap drive. For that old Diamondmax 9 drive I only needed 5 original modules for data access. In the end I recovered enough files for proof of concept but not enough to make my friend happy
It was fun as a side project but I have turned down "real jobs" that came in with that much platter damage. I can't even guess how many hours I put in to it in my spare time. It is really difficult to kill the heads on those old drives but I went through 3 sets. There were a number of tiny scratches on the surface.
Here are the basic steps I took.
1) Used donors to determine minimum modules required for data access.
2) Built smart hot swap drive
3) Cleaned platter
4) Platter swap and new heads
5) Built limiter
6) Got excited over any amount of recovered blocks
7) Used R-Studio for raw recovery

[labtech]

As sort of explained already, the biggest challenge will not be the damage in the parking area, rather the more than likely minuscule damage within the user area/SA sustained when the drive was dropped and subsequent power on attempts. Obviously the drive was working file before dropping, so, to see such deep scratch in the parking area, it indicates the customer, or whoever before the drive got to the lab, powered the sucker on quite a bit.

[D_R]

Obviously the drive was working file before dropping, so, to see such deep scratch in the parking area, it indicates the customer, or whoever before the drive got to the lab, powered the sucker on quite a bit.

Well, the customer said that his PC felt down (I think, a tower flipped over), he picked it up, but Windows was running. But short time later, he has a BOSD and the PC didn't start again. First of all, the customer gave his HDD to his fried, who tried to recover the data. Then I get the HDD.

What I don't understand is, where the scratch came from. I didn't hear scratching sounds. And at least on the top platter there is just the scratch in the Parking Area. Why are there no scratches on the other parts of the platter?

I talked to the customer. He said, that he can't pay the price, pcimage asked for his service. But he is going to pay for a head swap. Currently I have (or had) three donor drives. On the first try I did a normal head swap and put the heads to the parking area. The heads didn't survive that. So now I have two sets of heads left.

Can some one tell me, where the SA is on this drive? And what's going to happen, if I block the movement of the head, so it can't reach the Parking Area?

[H13]

Hi , u can try to boot from 0,1,2 only ..

[drHDD]

You need to park heads to good area close to parking area. You need to increase size of heads limiter to prevent heads to going to parking area. If drive can't spin up from "new" parking area - you need to help drive to start manually.

[D_R]

You need to increase size of heads limiter to prevent heads to going to parking area.

Currently I have some other Samsung Drives in my lab, I can play with. Today I glued a piece of cardboard onto the limiter.

But currently I feel bad and don't want to go to my clean room to put the magnet back to the test drive.

I never did such a recovery before. I think I will run into some problems.

1) The drive want to put the heads back into the park position and then find the "servo marks" on the platter. The drive can hang up on this process if the parking area is not reachable.

2) I still have no idea, where the SA is physically located on this drives. This area might be damaged. So I just have the modules from the donor drive, no p-/g- List and no translator.

3) Currently I see only the scratches on the top platter, but there might be scratches outside the parking area on the other platters, that are going to damage the new heads.

Maybe it's a good idea to start a working drive and then hot swap the HDA with heads outside of the Parking Area and the adjusted limiter.

[mr_spokk]

I would try to have the top head not physically connected..to read out the other heads first.