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Transplanted heads from a known good donor but still get Head Mask. The donor I purchased had the same model, firmware, site, hda p/n, p/n, and a few days from the failed one. I put the failed drive heads in the good donor and it took a minute to report ready, but it worked. A read test indicated that the heads were weak but still working. With the backed up firmware from the good donor I even tried externally booting it with Salvation Seagate Doctor to no luck. Tried a hotswap five times but still got Head Mask. I swapped the good heads back to the good donor and they still work as the drive reports ready within seconds. A read test did not show any damage in the transfer. I'm at a point in the recovery to say that the platter is degraded or damaged. I did take a look at the heads from both drives under a 200x microscope and have to say that the failed drives heads did not look as nice as the good donor. Probably why it had a hard time reporting ready and reading the surface. The platter shows no signs of visual damage as I was able to remove it (this is the last thing I did) with special tools. Unless anyone else can shed some light on this I fear it can not be recovered.
_________________ Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.
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