I've not seen too many of the WD 1TB & above drives in yet using the revised ROYL series circuit board (looks similar to the lot used on WD5000AAKS). Consequently I am not very familiar with the setup of these drives. I wondered if it's possible to get to a factory safe mode by placing jumpers on the pins like on the IDE drives (back then it was 3 vertical jumpers on the right hand side pins.)

Obviously on Seagate SATA drives to get access to the PCB it is just possible to remove the PCB completely and it will become 'ready' without the HDA attached. ROYL series Western Digital drives don't do this.

All the best,
John

_________________
CDR - Manchester Data Recovery Services
0161 408 4857
http://www.cheadledatarecovery.co.uk/

Why do you need to go to safe mode?

Usually WD disk will put itself into safe mode if there is a problem.

I wanted to take a copy of the ROM in the integrated CPU controller chip should I need it for later on. I think the drive I have has a head assembly fault anyway (stays busy, clicks for about 2 minutes then spins down).

However I am just interested in seeing what can be done with this series of drive as I have not had work with it very much yet. It appears that when I put 2 vertical jumpers on the right hand side pins I can get the drive to not spin and become ready. However, I do not have a matching firmware donor to load up the drive.


All the best,
John

_________________
CDR - Manchester Data Recovery Services
0161 408 4857
http://www.cheadledatarecovery.co.uk/

OK jumpers on pins 3 & 4 is just having it set in Power Up In Standby. Not much use sadly.

_________________
CDR - Manchester Data Recovery Services
0161 408 4857
http://www.cheadledatarecovery.co.uk/

when it clicks and spins down, pcb should come ready. You can then read rom.

there are still several options other than physical head replacement that can help if you are familiar with these drives.

Good Day
Mr.john it is possible to detect u r drive safe-mode in PC3000 u can easily take backup of u r ROM
could u mension u r Drive model Thanks.