Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
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WD4000AAJS - bad head swap?

May 19th, 2011, 22:49

I was able to image about 60% of the drive, but there were huge chunks that would not image and caused the drive to go busy. I swapped the heads and hooked up the drive to Atola to get the rest. However, now the drive is quietly clicking 3 times and then powering down. I am using the DRT alignment tool, but can't seem to find the sweet spot. My questions are:

1. Does this series drive have huge alignment issues - Tornado 2R series I believe?

2. Is there a way to determine if the head swap went ok, or if I just have to work with the alignment jig more?

Shawn

Re: WD4000AAJS - bad head swap?

May 19th, 2011, 23:20

This does not really have special alignment issues, like most of the pre-royals do. Clicking and powering down means that one or more heads is bad, or is a mismatch.

Re: WD4000AAJS - bad head swap?

May 19th, 2011, 23:45

Thats what I was afraid of. The donor appears to be a good match, both match on full model/firmware data, DCM's are:

DHRCNT2MHB
DHRNHT2AHB

Looks like I will be sourcing another donor and getting the 'right' head tool.

Re: WD4000AAJS - bad head swap?

May 23rd, 2011, 23:11

Update - I switched the original heads back onto the patient and the drive became ready and let me image the rest of the drive out (actually about 98%).

I believe the donor drive was a good match and I just botched the swap somehow. However, the interesting thing is that I was able to image the rest of the drive AFTER putting the original heads back on the original drive. As Jon indicated, there were no alignment issues.
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