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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Toshiba MK3263GSX Head Map

April 25th, 2017, 15:45

Do you know if its possible to get a head map from a Toshiba MK3263GSX through PC3K? I have just got a donor drive for a head swap and the physical heads map of the patient is 0,1,3, but the donor was 0,1,2. The only place I can find heads details is the Zone Allocation Table, but presume they are logical heads.

Re: Toshiba MK3263GSX Head Map

April 25th, 2017, 16:07

If you can upload the donor and patient ROMs, I could have a look for you.

Re: Toshiba MK3263GSX Head Map

April 25th, 2017, 16:15

fzabkar wrote:If you can upload the donor and patient ROMs, I could have a look for you.

Many thanks but through PC3K is how I want to achieve it if possible. I need to order a donor drive with 0,1,3 head map and suppliers like DonorDrives etc are able to check on PC3K before ordering. I think asking them to send me a load of ROM's might be a last resort.

But many thanks and it may be an option.

Re: Toshiba MK3263GSX Head Map

April 25th, 2017, 16:27

I'm assuming that the ROM would store the head map in a CP. If so, then comparing the CPs might enable us to determine which CP is the appropriate one, if any. Then all you would need to do would be to examine that particular CP.

Re: Toshiba MK3263GSX Head Map

April 25th, 2017, 17:15

There are 53 CP's on this drive so not that easy.

Re: Toshiba MK3263GSX Head Map

April 26th, 2017, 4:33

There are two ways. The easiest is to look for a 5065GSX which has all heads installed.

Re: Toshiba MK3263GSX Head Map

April 26th, 2017, 9:19

northwind wrote:There are two ways. The easiest is to look for a 5065GSX which has all heads installed.

+1

Re: Toshiba MK3263GSX Head Map

April 26th, 2017, 12:33

Thanks everyone. Good information.

Re: Toshiba MK3263GSX Head Map

May 1st, 2017, 21:18

I have examined every (?) byte in the CPs of an earlier Toshiba family and I haven't been able to find anything that looks like a typical head map.

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?t=2044

Re: Toshiba MK3263GSX Head Map

May 2nd, 2017, 11:21

fzabkar wrote:I have examined every (?) byte in the CPs of an earlier Toshiba family and I haven't been able to find anything that looks like a typical head map.

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?t=2044

Wow, great work :-)

Re: Toshiba MK3263GSX Head Map

May 2nd, 2017, 20:21

I compared the CPs from two MK6021GAS drives. I notice that the 3rd head in one drive has certain physical parameters which deviate significantly from the average. This is evident in the WC (CP 0x33), SH and HP CPs. (SH and HP are components of CP 0xBB.)

I'm wondering whether transferring these adaptive data from the donor to the patient would improve data recovery outcomes after a head swap.

Re: Toshiba MK3263GSX Head Map

May 2nd, 2017, 23:29

northwind wrote:There are two ways. The easiest is to look for a 5065GSX which has all heads installed.


+1 ,
But its worth experimenting with the observation of frank is indeed that data is adaptive data to facilitate better head swaps
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