Toshiba Heads or FW

[posidon]

I am working on Toshiba MK3261GSYN hard disk.
It has got detection I can read modules as well (except 2 ), crucial P list and G list can be read , however disk gives error while reading service tracks.
There seems to be somekind of MFT or ECC related issue as I could copy all MFT's after scanning I got all data folders which are corrupt.
In disk configuration I have tried to switch OFF smart / ECC ignore error and cache settings , but even after altering settings outcome does not change,
I think heads might be OK (head 1 at least). Can someone pls. let me know what is root cause of these errors , where head is to be blamed or its firmware related issue.
I have attached service area backup here -
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13gO6Iu ... sp=sharing

Attachments

[pcimage]

Seems to me that the heads are suspect.

[posidon]

Thanks pcimage.
Yes I suspect the same at least head 0 . But when I change ecc settings I could read flawlessly like any normal disk so I am puzzled whether heads are really bad or not.

[HaspHL]

PC3K cannot read Toshiba drives without utility

[posidon]

Hi HaspHL
Yes I am using PC3K with Utility & Toshiba serial adapter only ,I have recovered all data but large no of the files are corrupt (some of the folders are intact fully).
Since I am getting aprox. 25MB/sec transfer speed I cant say heads to blame fully. I think its either a bug or some setting

[HaspHL]

can be contaminated platters/heads

[unknown]

Toshiba utility will read garbage data.

can be contaminated platters/heads

+1

[BGman]

Scratches on the surface and "lack of experience"....

[HaspHL]

Scratches on the surface

Not necessarily
because:

I have recovered all data

[BGman]

Not necessarily
because:

I have recovered all data

Why did stop here? Read further!

[posidon]

Scratches on the surface and "lack of experience"....

Hello BGman
I accept I dont have much experience. Can you pls.enlighten all those "unexperienced" unfortunates with your expert knowledge ?
If you can't then what is the use of your experience in this forum?

[BGman]

what is the use of your experience in this forum?

To help those who need help...

[chipsang]

what is the use of your experience in this forum?

To help those who need help...

Hello BGman I think your diagnostics is totally wrong here , I have solved many cases similar to this .
He is clearly telling Data is getting recovered only it is corrupt & this is something related to settings.
I can solve this case in flat 2 minutes there is no platter degradation as you said.
posidon sent you pm , 1 tip and 1 trick , pls. report outcome here.

[fzabkar]

The errors reported for the CP checksums are bogus. The problem is that PC3K has a bug which results in some CPs having the wrong size.

I have written a tool which extracts correctly sized CPs from the ROM.

Attachments

CP_corrected_sizes.7z

(3.15 KiB) Downloaded 387 times

[posidon]

The errors reported for the CP checksums are bogus. The problem is that PC3K has a bug which results in some CPs having the wrong size.

I have written a tool which extracts correctly sized CPs from the ROM.

Good moring everyone , Happy sunday.
Awesome fzabkar
you are great , finding bugs and solutions from products of a big company like acelab having so many developers ,technology ,resources and expertise is something unbelievable .

[posidon]

what is the use of your experience in this forum?

To help those who need help...

Hello BGman I think your diagnostics is totally wrong here , I have solved many cases similar to this .
He is clearly telling Data is getting recovered only it is corrupt & this is something related to settings.
I can solve this case in flat 2 minutes there is no platter degradation as you said.
posidon sent you pm , 1 tip and 1 trick , pls. report outcome here.

Thanks a ton chipsang
I am happy to write 2 simple tips by chipsng has resulted in nearly 100 % data recovery (with exception to few files which are trapped in bad sectors)
Happy ending to the case.

[labtech]

Was one of the tips reducing UDMA speed?

[posidon]

Was one of the tips reducing UDMA speed?

hi labtech ,it didn't reduce speed

Here are those suggestions --
1) While entering utility check whether ATA+COM is selected -- here in my case only ATA was selected earlier (don't know whether that is default)
This helped I think to read zone allocation table properly,
2) There are 2 ways to create virtual translator and disk response / reading is different for both ---
a) we can create virtual translator while creating Headmap ---- This works , reading in this case is normal (green colour) unlike reading through utility.
b) Virtual translator in "reading by utility " selection , in this case disk reading response is different ( colour is orange here)
By these 2 simple changes I was successful to recover all data though head 0 was weak.

I have one query regarding heads /platters here .
often sometime reading is perfect without any issues ,but on same disk after some time large defects and degradation is observed.
that means platter response for same head is different at different locations.
may be defective zones or that part of platters is used more frequently (often c drive)