HDD Gurus: What would you advise?

[counting_crows]

I have a 200GB SATA WD. Drive's health detoriarated quickly. Reallocation table full, etc. Its graphs were really screwed. Most utilities would bail out on the drive and it was full of UNCs and RED marks.

I replaced the PCB with another WD 200GB. PCB numberes were different. The drive powered on, clicked a bit and stopped naturally due to mismatching PCB. Removed the PCB, put the old one back. Now most of the drive is good, only the last 40M sectors bad (350M to 390M). The pattern is the same on this bad section: 6-7 lines of normal readings, 2-3 lines of green-brown-reds (sometimes with UNCs). Before the PCB replacement, whole of the drive exhibited same behaviour. Now only little bit at the beginning and >350M.

I would like to use sectors 50M to 350M. Data over there works so far after repeated torture tests. I created an empty partition for 25GB. and allocated rest of the good sectors to the partition i would like to use and left the remaining bad LBAs unpartitioned. Please note that i require the drive space, but no sane person would or should commit any data on a drive like this, therefore i will be using it for backup of backups.

Here are my questions:

1. I reckon this is a head damage. Is this correct? Repetead tests all show the errors at exactly same places.

2. Why would a mismatching PCB make drive's health better?

3. Is there any way to use SET_MAX_LBA or similiar command to utilize 50M sectors to 350M sectors instead of starting from 0 sectors?

Thank you for your time, and have a good day!

Maria

PS: Screenshot below shows mostly greens... but near the end of the drive all those bands where greens are turn to brown-red.

[rchadwick]

Those dreaded greens again.....

The pattern would indicate a head issue. You may have a bad connection between the head connector, and the pads on the PCB. Based on what you've done, this would be my best guess. A pencil eraser works wonders for polishing contacts (Except for gold plated ones, unless if you have a light touch, or you don't want them gold plated)

[counting_crows]

rchadwick, greetings!

Thank you for the advice. I will try cleaning the contacts with some cotton and isoprophyl alcohol.

And no, it is not green blocks. I just did not want to carry on more since it was taking awfully long time. It is all > 500 ms near end (the band pattern).

[rchadwick]

Sorry, the 'Green' comment was just a joke concerning a previous poster.

[N.C.]

1. I reckon this is a head damage. Is this correct? Repetead tests all show the errors at exactly same places.

2. Why would a mismatching PCB make drive's health better?

3. Is there any way to use SET_MAX_LBA or similiar command to utilize 50M sectors to 350M sectors instead of starting from 0 sectors?

Hello,

1. this looks like head or side of the platter damage, only one head affected.
2. this is not caused by the pcb, most likely heat issue. (the drive getting cooler when you swap the pcb, or similar)
3. you can partition out the unwanted area.

I suggest to drop the drive, and buy another one, or place it to non-important place, like musicbox.

Regards,
Janos

[counting_crows]

N.C., thanks for the response.

This is not a heat issue. Hard drive has been tested when cold too.

Yes, I partition it. But what i wanted to know was something similiar to SET_MAX command to limit the size of the drive between 2 LBAs so the OS would not be seeing them (and trying to read faulty sectors at the beginning).

Cleaning contacts did not help in this case.

Too much hassle with this drive, waste of my time. I am throwing it away. The reason i wanted to know... well, i will open a seperate topic.

Thank you all.

[rameez]

One of your heads are bad . You need to disable it to reuse the drive .

[counting_crows]

rameez, thank you. I have been reading your posts in many areas i required assistance through this forum. You have been very helpful (even though you might not know it).

Is the drive space usable (less the area head is servicing) reliably when the head is disabled?

The drive constantly seeks even it is not being used.

Is there any ATA commands that needs to be issued to disable the head? Is it something that can be done via software? I don't have access to any DR equipment, i am just an end user.

Any guidance might be appreciated.

Thanks again.

[rameez]

Its not that easy to disable heads u need to edit Rom content and degrade the drive by editing modules that needs special knowledge and hardware as well .
So i am sorry to say it wont be possible for u .

[counting_crows]

rameez, thanks.

No big deal. Thank you for the assistance.

[counting_crows]

This drive is back to its initial broken stage.

Only LBAs 250-320M is good. Rest (0-250M and 320-390M) exhibit the same pattern of degredation. Freezing, hammering and dropping it did not help or make it any worse

Do you reckon the problem is still the heads?

[counting_crows]

5 of 6 heads damaged? Or this is something else?

[N.C.]

5 of 6 heads damaged? Or this is something else?

no, 1 of 6.

Janos

[thatdellguy]

Freezing, hammering and dropping it did not help or make it any worse

You need a bigger hammer or a larger building.

[counting_crows]

5 of 6 heads damaged? Or this is something else?

no, 1 of 6.

Janos

Janos, how is that?

Only 1/6 of the drive looks good now. Out of 390M sectors, only 70M is good.