Hi everyone !

I hope someone might help me at least understand what's going on with a disk I've been given...

So. A friend of mine had a 1TB WD drive that fell, powered on, of course. And of course, had important data on it. Heads were stuck, and having a low budget, he was open to try repairing it, fully aware it might be the last nail in the coffin...

So first I ordered a donor drive to swap heads as quickly and cleanly as possible (Platter seemed ok, scratch was not visible to the naked eye.) I tested the donor drive first, it was working OK.

Everything went well but now when connected, the drive spins up, the head moves, seems to try to find its starting point without success 3 times, then parks. The drive keeps spinning but of course we can't do much in this situation. Plus, the PCB has a direct USB port and not SATA, which isn't helping.

Now, my question is : I understand I might not necessarily be able to repair it on my own, but I'd like to at least under what's the problem exactly. Does it need a change in the firmware, head alignment, or something like that ?

Would be interested in your input.

There are many things that should match for a good donor, how did you prove the donor heads would match? That you can not see a scratch does not mean there is none. There might be media damage on the lower side of the platters.



That the drive is not working might have many causes:

1) head mismatch
2) damaged heads when swapping
3) damage to SA
4) dust inside the casing / on the platter
5) damaged electronics / pcb
...

hard to tell which cause it might be.
best regards,

_________________
030 Datenrettung Berlin GmbH (Germany)
HDD, SSD, NAS, RAID Datenrettung - 030-datenrettung.de

Did you match the necessary DCM parameters when searching for the donnor ?

Did you take into account the drive adaptative settings like the microjogs ?

Some useful readings:
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=6562
http://blog.acelaboratory.com/pc-3000-h ... rives.html

For Western Digital, you can find a SATA board that is compatible with your USB board :
http://ts.acelaboratory.com/index.php?/ ... usb-drives

Your question doesn't give enough details about the patient and donnor drive that you used (exact product numbers, DCM, board numbers, which board is used on the new drive, a.s.o.) and about the procedure you followed.

DCM is not important for these models.
My bet is that the head transplant did not go as planned.
And now there are bigger issues.

_________________
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Really? Are you sure? I always match a part of the DCM code on them, and I get near perfect results at matching heads that way.

_________________
Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

I never look at DCM, cuz even with different DCM these drive are compatible enough. Date close enough, headmap, family, PCB # = good to go. But yeah I would agree with Northwind, I have a feeling that the drive was ran without the lid.

Long time ago I was looking for right DCM to find good donor. Sometimes later I found that it's not always necessary. But surprisingly I returned back to DCM again.

Some drives it's necessary, for example Shrek & Hubble from memory.

But generally they can be pretty forgiving

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I don't have problems with donors, so for me easiest way to pick donor with right dcm in first time.

I never said I had problems with donors, I have plenty and I know how to choose the right one.

Just saying that sometimes DCM matters but mostly not, so sometimes I have to select which donor will work!

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

Exactly.

DCM is not important for most of the modern drives. It used to be important in old families like Hawk, Buccaneer and perhaps up to Tornados (I don't remember). After that, DCM was not significant.
It started being important again from Dragons and on, but again not always.
And yes, it is important for Shreks.

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Agreed

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