Hello, Buenos días, Bonjour, Salve & Guten Tag

Hitachi drive, changed Heads twice but the drive still does not get ready. It has a tiny scratch, but I don't think it's in the service area.

P.S. PCB is OK.

Any Ideas?
Thanks.

What model ?

Dobre

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Murphy was an optimist

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HTS541080G9SA00

I've had similar cases, and I've been able to get the drive to come ready in some instances, but it works in an extremely degraded state and eventually dies again. Other times, it just doesn't come ready at all. I've had scratches that were so slight, that you could barely see them. I also had a few drives with small nicks in the platter that gave the same result. It seem as though when the drive powers up and calibrates, it passes over these areas and damages the new heads. At least that is what I've seen in my experience.

Well the scratch is really tiny, I did not even notice it at first. So I am not sure if this is the problem or not. The drive starts to calibrate and then returns back to the ramp. Motor keeps spinning? different PCB, same results. Different heads, same results... As to my Knowledge these drives are not too picky about the Heads. I just did one with bad heads about 3 weeks ago and did not have a problem. Is it really do to the scratch or is something else causing the problem?

No, they aren't too picky about heads, but like I said, if the damage to the platter is severe enough, even if it is only a very small scratch, I have seen instances where that will be enough to damage and even kill replacement heads. That's just my experience though.

Ok, Thanks or the quick reply.

I will test the heads by putting them back on to the original source. But how about the heads returning to the ramp? usually I see the heads trying to calibrate and attempt to read SA over and over. Where In this instance this is not the case.

I have the same problem though. But the hard disk is WD 2.5". There is a very tiny scratch on the platter which you barely see unless if you focus your eyes deeply on the platter.

I got the same exactly donor hard disk and do the head changing. The hard disk is now working and I do the imaging process immediately. Unfortunately, it stops after the imaging process reached at certain sectors. I redo the imaging a few times but at the end the hard disk died and not detected even using PC3K.

In my opinion, even though there is a tiny scratch on the platter, but it does not guarantee you can bypass the sector and recover all the data.

Or maybe someone can share their successful experience recovering this type of problem?

-cypher.

In cases where I can actually see the scratch, if the drive comes ready, I image it under a flow hood with the cover off. With a WD, that may not be possible, because there really won't be anything anchoring the head to the chassis, since in most of those it's the case cover that does that. In other drives it's not a problem.

This where DDI comes in handy. On iffy drives, I just use the file selection utility in DDI to select only the sectors that contain the customer's most critical data. Then once those sectors are selected, I'll image with the cover off until I get close to the damaged area. Then I reverse image until I get to the damaged area. If things go well, you should just have a small area of the drive that doesn't get imaged.

PCB gives ready without HDA?
Show us last 6 bytes of NVRamm.
Donor's heads survived?
HDA is smooth without backlash, notebook did not fall?

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Angel Data Recovery

I can recover for you if you want.
Pm me if interested.

Janos

What's DDI?

Deepspar Disk Imager

Dr Kiev,
Thanks for the response, but this post was from 2009 a few hundred recovery cases ago

@CypherHackz, usually in this type of case you can get the data, but might need several head stacks since they might all die after some time. gtd4242 advice to keep an eye on the platters and the area being imaged is good advice.