WD400JB cannot read sectors from 30GB to 35GB

[jermy]

It would be interesting to test as well if my HRT-DRE card would be able to "extract" more data or read more sectors then your software only sollution ...

IMHO yes

[Roberto]

If you are willing to ship the drive to Portugal and pay something for the service i don't mind to attempt to clone the drive using my hardware cloning/imaging tool.

It would be interesting to test as well if my HRT-DRE card would be able to "extract" more data or read more sectors then your software only sollution ...

Thank you very much for your offer.
I will discuss that with the owner of the HDD.
If he is willing to pay, I will accept your offer in any case.
How much do you want for your service? You can send me a private message.

I would also like to see the difference between your hardware imaging and my software-only-solution
But for fairness you should make 2 images, 1 before firmware issue fixing (if there's something wrong) and 1 after

[jermy]

But for fairness you should make 2 images, 1 before firmware issue fixing (if there's something wrong) and 1 after

most likely not a FW issue

[fzabkar]

Also you would have to suppy a drive to copy the image to or to clone the original to.

ISTM that the OP only needs the area from 30GB to 35GB. That should fit on 1 or 2 DVDs, or a small flash drive.

[Roberto]

It's no problem, there's no need of DVD's.

I can also send to USB flash drives with a size of 64GB.
So the full image can be compared.

But before sending the HDD maybe I'm going to take another image (or at least near the bad area),
in order to achieve the best result.

Because the reading was so strange I initiated very big "Jumps" over the bad area.
At the end the "Jumps" were 1GB big to skip the bad area to prevent head wear.
But of course the "last Jump" may have led to a missing area behind the bad area.
I don't know how big this area is, maybe 10-100MB.
I will try to find out and possibly "correct" this missing zone in my image.

This post should not be interpreted as a justification in advance
I just want a "fair" comparison between hard- and software-imaging.

[Roberto]

I hope I can send it today, because I go to the city today.
Please excuse the delay

I had some "problems" to fix and did not found the time last week.
The cloned destination drive had some errors on it.
This came to light when I cloned it to the USB flash drive.
It was only a few, but I did not want to "miss" this sectors.

Luckily I always make 1 "Image" and 1 clone, so I did not have to touch the original drive.
So I made a "freshly cloned hard drive" which I will send to you instead of the USB flash drive.

Thank you very much for your help again.

[Roberto]

@Spildit:
The package was sent
I hope it will find it's way to you.

[Roberto]

Ok then !

So you had send 1 cloned drive + original drive ?

Did you manage to clone any more data from 30Gb to 35Gb with your other attempts ?

I will be looking forward to get your drive and attempt to image it with HRT-DRE.

I have send you 4 drives:
The original drive, 1 cloned and 2 "spare drives" if you need firmware modules from them.
But please be aware with one of the spare drives, you will see that the PCB is somehow "repaired" in an unusual way.

I had decided not to make any other imaging-attempts with the original-drive.
I didn't want to risk head-wear before you have tried to image with your HRT.
So I still miss the mentioned area (30-35GB), but the zone behind went very well (35-38GB).

I still hope that the bad zone is unreadable because of firmware issues,
although I understand that the chance is very low.

[Roberto]

It will be very interesting to compare your image/clone done with software only with hardware based imaging.
I will post here as soon as i recieve your drive and start working on it !!!
Regards.

I am also very very curious
I hope that the software will not perform too bad.
It will also be very interesting to see the time difference of the 2 solutions.
But I have to admit, that I cannot surely remember how many time it took.
Effectively it was probably only a few hours because of the "small" source (only 40GB).

[Roberto]

Do you want me to CLONE the drive to a spare one that you provided or should i create an IMAGE FILE on one of the drives ?

I would prefer the cloned drive (seagate) instead of one of the spares.
Please clone to this drive.
I have no "trust" to the spare drives. I think they are not 100% OK.

Finaly i will retry on the bad sectors several times and then this might kill the heads.

I think it's worth if we get some extra data.

[Roberto]

Ok then.
I will be waiting to recieve those drives.
I will also test out the other drives and will post a report.
Have a nice weekend.

Thank you very much, I wish you also a nice weekend and a good time.

Maybe I'll be offline till 02.05.2016 because I want to celebrate Passover.

[labtech]

The power of hardware imaging and know-how are undisputed.

[pcimage]

Very thorough work, well done

[labtech]

Imaging results would be pretty much the same across all, give or take few LBAs. It is not so much about the tool per se, but the condition of the block. Special parameter reading does not always give better results.

P.S. Don't know anything about MRT, but given past discussions, I guess it is self explanatory.

[Roberto]

@Spildit

Awesome work
I have to thank you very very much for your help.

I'm very happy that you could get the important "extra" data.
Thank God the sectors were not physically damaged as expected.

[Roberto]

Your package was shipped last friday.

Thank you very very much!
Hope the package makes it way back to me without issues.

What's your conclusion about comparing my software-only-clone with your hardware-supported-clone?

[Roberto]

HELLLOOO !!!
Hope that you are still there !

By the tracking log the drives arrived back to you yesterdad, Friday, 13 of May of 2016 at 11:30.

Please let us know if you checked the drives and if all is ok !

Let us know if you have all of the data that you wanted back so i can delete my local copy of the image file.

Also please do some testing with your cloning software and compare the results on the "fixed" drive agains my clones.

Regards and please do post some feedback when you have time to do so !!!

Alex.

Hello Alex,

Sorry for the delay.
I have received your package.
And it looks like the data is ALL there
Thank you very much again.

But please give me some more time to check the files, before you delete your ímage file.

I will also do the comparison with my cloning tool.
I hope I'll get the time for doing this in the next days.
Then I'll come back to show the results.

Best Regards

[Roberto]

+1 ,
He is Damn Well Right Buddy .You Claim To Use a HiFi Sector Cloning Software ,I Sense in Your Posts That Do Not Have Much Knowledge About HDD's in General ,Maybe Its time To Try Something Better DDrescue With a Graphical Interface

Looks like my cloning software has turned out to be more than only HiFi.
Now it seems to be really SciFi
With it's Science Fiction Technology it could read the "repaired" original HDD without any errors!
I guess this comes from the supernatural algorithms which probably could emulate a contactless turbocharged laser magnetic reading unit.

Joking aside guys

Can someone please explain this unexpected result?

@Spildit
Is it possible that you accidentally "translated" those bad sectors to good ones?

[Roberto]

Here's a screenshot of Victoria 4.47

It looks the same as your pic at first sight.

There are also 182 reallocated sectors and 189 pending sectors.

[Roberto]

What could have happened is that your cloning software is somehow flagging the sectors as good or somehow those sectors were added to the G-List by your software.

I cannot imagine that. My cloning tool has no implementation for such things..... at least as far as I know and understand the source-code.

Do run MHDD/Victoria on the drive and scan it. It should find bad sectors at the start and across the drive.

This is the scan result with API mode

Interestingly it differs from the scan in PIO mode

If so those bad sectors are still there and your software is just cloning the drive taking the data it can from the sectors and considering them as good ?

How could this be done without vendor specific commands? I don't think my cloning tool has built in VSCs.
I thought reading defective sectors with bad checksums could only be read by VSCs, or am I wrong?

I'm sure that the drive have those 180 bad sectors. I didn't remap them to the G-List. Maybe your software managed to do so. Check S.M.A.R.T. and you should see the number of relocated sectors.

Smart Data (see screenshot in last post) seems to be similar to your screenshot.

At any rate, do you have the totality of the data that you wanted intact ?

As far as I can see ALL the data from the important partition is there.
But I cannot confirm that until the owner tells me the same.
He hasn't picked up his drive till now

I think this should happen in the next days.
Please keep the image file till I get the OK from the owner.