Hi again
This time I've got a WD with a quite strange problem. When scanning with MHDD, the scanning program stucks and the screen goes crazy... that happens when the scanning reaches some specific LBA addresses which point to a non existing reference (sector 4398046511104 or close ~ 2TB). PC3K heads and modules ar all ok but selfscan modules, which return a read error (that shouldn't be a big deal), and SA area test shows the following:

The most strange thing is that this very same problem happens to all 3 drives comprising a RAID5 which failed due to an electric failure. The OS picks up the drives. Have this happend to you before?
P.D.: One thing I noticed is that G-List is empty in at least one drive and almost empty in another one.
Cheers

Had some case where GARBAGE on a module did strange things. I mean module has correct header and maybe checksum OK but non-coherent data in it. Don't think the SS module with error can prevent the drive to work correctly in normal mode. If you are doing DR, can you get the data anyway ? After that (IF DR WAS SUCCESSFUL), just to see if the problem is still persistent and clear this condition, I'll backup the FW, clear the G-list. regenerate the translator, turn drive off then on and zero fill. Maybe some part of the SA was garbled during power failure / brownout. Happened to me on a Samsung SP2514N of mine, luckily totally recovered - same symptom, cause : trash on module.

Thanks BlackST. I'll check out a module garbage problem... I see the drive under Windows and I can extract some data (from the whole array), but I've tried to image the drives and the PC reboots when imaging reaches a, perhaps, non-valid state... resulting a 23 GB image instead a 500 GB one.

Just curious : SMART ATTs are ok and can you scan, let's say, 200 Gb continuously in MHDD? I was thinking about Smart log / pending reloc. too and the scenario...

Nope, I wrote down the first LBA address in which MHDD got crazy and then begun another scanning skipping all sectors before the bad referenced one +2, and did the same each time the screen went funny. First one is at ~23.20 GB, second one at ~23.21 GB, then there are more at ~24 GB and beyond... making it difficult to image.

OK, I just wanted to say that I've finally managed to image those drives. The only way that has worked to me has been using the linux command "dd" with the conversion "noerror,sync". It worked fine, although its imaging speed (dd's) is about 600 kB/s, and these are 500 GB drives... u_u so it copies less than 50 GB per day. Give it a try if nothing else works.

Did it copy every block or just override?

It overrode the bad blocks (as I expected). You can define a small block size to avoid skipping good sectors beside the bad ones.

Better than nothing... Time consuming, anyway.

But doesn't the checksum have to match the module data? Doesn't what you describe defeat the entire purpose of a checksum?

You can replace a Plist with some verses from Kamasutra, recalc checksum (module OK)... Try a translator regen now