Dug out another faulty disk to experiment with
Don’t need the data, but would be nice to resurrect the drive

WD2500JB

Spins up ok
BIOS and Victora sees the disk id and details and size right
but OS doesn’t see the drive
Remained like this ok for an hour or two, even though the drive got noticeably hot, and ok through a couple of reboots

Didn’t bother trying any sector reads or scan

went straight to secure erase, via Victoria, to ‘clean up’ and scan the media in the assumption it would re-map out any bad areas and/or help physically re-init the drive

The secure erase, which temporarily sets the ata password, indicated the password operation failed
but continued to run (although can’t tell if was actually doing anything)

After 90 minutes the drive emitted head reseek noises

Not sure if this was due to the secure erase or any original issue or overheating

Power cycle and drive spins up, get reseek noises and spins down
(only spins down if IDE cable attached, stays spinning if no IDE cable attached)

Victoria now show it as
WDC WDC2500 no serial number “LBA not supported” CHS 8MB Failed
ie no longer recognised properly
(this was with the ide cable attached obviously, and the same both with it spinning and when spun down)

Anyone any thoughts ?
Head/preamp issue or just a firmware issue ?
And could the secure erase have affected it or was that just a coincidence ?
Someone else had an issue with spindown only if IDE cable attached. wd2500jb-was-clunking-and-running-hot-t8447.html Can anyone explain that ?


Thanks

Next time scan the surface before doing anything. Sounds like you killed it. Bin it.

Update - it intermittently comes back now with no clicking (after power cycle)
showing full WD2500JB and serial number and xxx LBAs = 238475Mb

but scan doesnt have any success
and times out on every block
and often goes not ready again (but no clicking and is spinning)

But at least I can experiment a bit further

Looks like it can't read or write any SA (or user) area
eg can't read SMART
can't set password
And keeps going not ready

But no clicking, and is spinning ok and can hear initial head movement

Whats the most likely cause of the not ready ?

Update
Can sometimes read the SMART data
Can read (scan) some blocks on the drive, but lots of them (in contigious blocks) it is unable to access
and stays busy / not ready a lot

Weak/failing head and media uncertain... And no real tools to work with. Tough...

Just for info, I ran chk_wd on the drive
and it showed the following errors

(although of course can't guantee this was reading all the module right in its current state, but did read most of them ok)

ID:25h-Head0 --> <---------------------[!!! Error Reading File !!!]
ID:25h-Head1 --> File Is Good
RBBList.bin (RelocBadBlkList)

ID:29h-Head0 --> <---------------------[!!! Error Reading File !!!]
ID:29h-Head1 --> File Is Good
DrmLog.bin (Smart Log)

ID:2Dh-Head0 --> <---------------------[!!! Error Reading File !!!]
ID:2Dh-Head1 --> File Is Good
DrmAlter.bin (SmartAlernativ)

ID:42h-Head0 --> <---------------------[!!! Error Reading File !!!]
ID:42h-Head1 --> File Is Good
CfgSec (Config Sector - DIR)

ID:47h-Head0 --> <----------------------[!!! Incompatible File !!!]
ID:47h-Head1 --> <----------------------[!!! Incompatible File !!!]
<UnknownName>


Does this give any clues ?

Supplemental Q:
This tool implies there are two copies of each block, one per head
Is this true
Other blocks, not shown above are ok on both Head0 and Head1

Any way to force it it init using the head1 blocks ?

The forum thread wd600ab-only-shows-idnf-mhdd-t10943.html relating to a WD600AB suggests the block 25 is translator and gives a wd specific script that might rebuild it
It might give that a go out to see if it has any effect

.... and if the go ends with a crash ?

Well the .wdctrans script didnt help

chkd_wd shows the same errors (and also have ID:20h-Head0 also not reading)
PDList.bin (PushDownList SA)

but that might just be the intermittent nature of some modules sometime readble sometimes not

Anyway it was a fun(!) experiment with nothing to loose