Sanity check on hotswap method

[acforensics]

Hi Gurus,

Maybe it's late, or maybe I don't know what the hell I'm doing, but the hotswap method is not making sense right now, especially for WD drives.

I have a WD drive(WD2500JB-98GVA0) and a donor(WD2500JB-00GVA0). If I do a hotswap, I'll need to desolder the ROM from the patient HDA and solder it to the donor HDA(I know I could use a programmer to do this process too). Then, I'll boot up the donor HDA with its PCB containing the patient ROM chip, spin the motor down, remove the PCB and place it on the patient HDA, spin back up, then image the drive.

But when I boot up the donor HDA/PCB with the patient ROM, it complains, which makes sense because the ROM code goes with the SA(mismatch between the donor SA and patient ROM). I also get compaints when I try to image. Am I missing something here?

Thanks for any and all help.

A

[dobrevjetser]

Hi AC,

Its a little more complicated than that!

First you have to have a drive thats completely compatible, this means that you have to be able to use the controller-card from your donor-drive on the defective drive and vice-versa. At least so compatible you can start the drive from it and check/write the SA.
You start the donordrive with the patients pcb; put the drive in standby, and put the pcb onto the patient.
Then you should be able to access the SA.
Copy the different modules needed (plist, translator, adaptives etc...), and then
copy the translator (if its ok; if not copy plist and regenerate translator) and adaptives to the donordrive.
Now return the pcb, start the donordrive, put it back into standby, and put the pcb on the patient again.
Now the pcb should contain all the correct information where the defective areas are on the drive, and you should be able to image the drive, if not completely, at least some of the platters.
Then you can use Rstudio or winhex or whatever to scan the image.

Afterwards, restore the modified modules on the donordrive and you can use it agein for another job.


Best reagards,

Dobre

[coffeebean]

Hi Dobre,

you do this ?

[dobrevjetser]

Hi Coffeebean,

Yes, I do.
Helps in many cases; not always.

Dobre

[acforensics]

Thanks for the good info Dobre. Have you ever done a successful hotswap on a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7? Anyone? Got any tricks?

A

[prodata]

For Seagate Barracuda

first you must to assure that your donor drive have same SA Address.
if tthe SA address is not same then it is impossible to do Hotswap. WHY ???? because ZONE table is not same for both your donor and Patient Drive.

if both SA is same. then the procedure is still the same with what dobre have told..

best regards.
Aping

[acforensics]

Thanks Aping. By SA Address, you mean SA Map?

A