This drive comes ready, ID's perfectly, no unusual noises, no errors popping up in terminal, but it just reads sooooo slow. In DDI, there are only a few areas where you can read anything at a decent rate. Most sectors can't be read unless you have it ignore ECC errors. If I let it run in this mode, I'll be dead before it finishes. I didn't see any CE Log errors crop up in terminal. Everything appears to be normal. Any ideas on what else to check? I don't like the thought of just swapping heads, without having a good reason to do so.

small things to try:
1) check firmware modules
2) screw/unscrew head'screw
3) try forward/back direction
4) decrease block size also help to leave less occupied the hard drive data flow to any data exctractors.

anyway i usually do this after have tried all that up: read with the first set of heads using the most fast heads, swap again and read with the others heads, if necessary swap it again ( maximum personally i reached 4 swaps to read at medium speed an hard drive, but it need many donor parts and customer must understand it )

cheers.

Have you done a head map & media test to check the heads?
Also could you image via mft & only selecting the files you require instead of imaging the whole drive? Assuming its ntfs.


Loki