Hi, I found this site from an old bookmark I had when I used an article on "head stack replacement" to successfully ressurect my wife's failed harddrive. I'm not an data expert or anything like that, but I do have an extensive tech backround and can work my way around electronics. I was hoping someone here might have delt with this problem before without $10K in analysis hardware, so I figured I'd ask.

I have two Western Digital VelociRaptors, both built 7 months ago (according to spec sheet on each drive), with matching model and PCB numbers. Recently I had a short in my computer case which caused several hard restarts until I traced it and fixed it. However, now one of my Velociraptors is reporting itself as an jumbled character string to the motherboard bios and windows; it also is reporting as a different LBA (~40% original size) and an equally jumbled character set for the S/N. When I pull drive information through windows the hard drive is only identified by it's character string (whereas my other drive is a WD3000GLFS) with same improper LBA. Drive was tested in a second PC that reported the same, so it's the drive and not the computer. Furthermore I worked with HDHacker and a few other programs and verified the MBR was fine, but the LBA and improper name (as well as a jumbled character set for the S/N) persisted. HOWEVER, the drive is bootable into windows, just with a 110GB visible partition and 22GB unallocated space. I had 2 partitions on the drive (C drive was 110GB, D was the rest), so I guess the D drive was truncated but the C was left untouched, further making me suspect a firmware reporting problem. In fact, I am typing on it now.

Anyway, i'm fairly certain that the firmware was corrupted by whatever act of chance the shorts caused. I've recovered what data I needed, but now would just like to get the drive back to it's original state. Is there a way to dump the firmware from my good drive and flash it to my bad drive without expensive tools? Or is there somewhere I can get the firmware? I know I can take a shot a replacing the PCB, or send it in to WD, or a data specialty shop, but since I'm just trying to save the HD it'd be much more prudent to just buy another drive long before that. With that in mind, I'd like to give flashing the drive a shot since I don't have anything to loose, if it's even possible.

Any help is GREATLY appreciated. Thanks!

Probably SA problem. To repair this you will indeed need 10K$ equipment.
My suggestion: Bin this drive and buy another one.

Best regards,

dobre

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If they are less than a year old then they should be under warranty. Send it back and get a free new one.

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