Hi
WD10JMVW dropped causing damage to one of the four heads and not allowing the drive to initialise. Performed a head swap with donar and now drive is detected and partition info is available as are directory structures. Problem is most of the data seems to be on unreadable sectors.

Is this a sign of incompatible donar heads or a case that one of the platters that is not so visible has sustained damage from the failed head?

Thanks in advance for any pointers

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http://www.computerworksuk.com

You should use a compatible donor instead of a donar.

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

Yeah ,
Can You Tell Us What and How You Matched Your Donor

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Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

Thanks for the replies. What I'm asking is are these the symptoms of a mismatched doner

Cheers

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http://www.computerworksuk.com

Well,
Thats What i am asking you tell us what and how you matched simple question

_________________
Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

Ok sure. Matches exact
Model number plus digits 567 of second part of model number
If the drive has initialised and read the SA unwound have thought the heads were compatible no?

Thanks

_________________
http://www.computerworksuk.com

Well,
Check The Head From The Stack Assembly that Was Bad And Then Examine the Platter .Might Be It Has a Trace Of Damage .What Tools Are At Hand ?

_________________
Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

Is model number is the only thing you checked for HSA compatibility? If this is the case, you sould research a bit more for HSA compatibility criteria. It's all there.

What you use for reading SA? Are all modules OK or you have some bad? If you have bad modules try to repair them or upload from donor.
Also one of the heads can be bad or dirty. Put those heads back in donor and see if they still work.

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Sistrum Data Recovery
http://www.sistrum.mk/en

I've not got a tool that can read the SA I'm just assuming it's been read successfully as the drive initialises and I can extract some data successfully from the drive. The problem is with this drive is it's come from a WD Passport and has the USB integrated. I would have to convert / bypass the USB to SATA in order for me to use my DFL-FRP (WD) to analyse the drive.

Have tried putting the heads back into the donor and thge donor drive works fine.

As well as matching the model number I also matched country of manufacture, DCM 4th,5th,6th and 7th character and also DOM within 3 months.

When I examined the patients drives heads I noticed that the 4th head was damaged so I'm thinking the IO errors are actually being caused by some damage to the bottom side of the second platter. In which case I'm guessing I would have to disable that head and read off the rest of the data if possible.

But to do this I would need to by-pass the USB bridge on the PCB of the drive.

_________________
http://www.computerworksuk.com

DLF-FRP for WD should work with this USB drive SA. No need to bypass USB. If drive is recognized OK, use FRP to read from USB and check modules, probably you have few bad ones: SMART, G List, Relo List etc.
I hope you can use USB, if you solder SATA to it, you will deal with encryption after that.

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Sistrum Data Recovery
http://www.sistrum.mk/en

No you can't plug a USB hard drive into DFL-FRP

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http://www.computerworksuk.com

No plug in to FRP device, plug WD in to regular USB3 port on the PC motherboard and when you start WD application select for source USB.
Check the manual, should be explained there.

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Sistrum Data Recovery
http://www.sistrum.mk/en

Heads are most likely compatible.

Looks like media damage, which is very difficult to overcome via USB

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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!

Maybe they meant Donair?

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

Agreed...most of the times when heads are bad, there is media damage to accompany, particularly after the drive was dropped.

This is what I love about the USB add-on for DDI 4.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

So I'm guessing the only way to get to the data on the healthy platter sides is to switch off the head that relates to the faulty platter.

I may have to get hold of DDI's USB add-on to allow me to turn off the head via native USB calls, unless anyone has another suggestion. As for DFL-FRP WD it does not pick up USB drives full stop. The drive would have to be plugged into the DFL-FRP and that's not a supported option on these products.

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http://www.computerworksuk.com

Not to point out the obvious detail here, but you do realize that if you're reading via SATA from a Passport drive you're reading encrypted data. So if you are seeing the partition table as you say, it means you must have written some un-encrypted data to it???

I think you are in a bit over your head.

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

I don't think so - I have a pretty big head

_________________
http://www.computerworksuk.com

Sorry, but am I missing something here?

I can't see that the OP is reading from SATA.

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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!