Hello,

I did made a head swap for an old Caviar 40 GB WD400BB-00JKC0. The HSA replacement was made in an HEPA booth with proper head comb tool. After repairing some modules from CRC fails, etc. all of the modules were readed and checked ok with licensed WDMarvel. Also, the head testing was passed ok (the unit has a two head assembly, but only a single head is used in this particular drive model).

Although always seems ok in WDMarvel (modules, config, zones, heads, etc.) the drive does not start its operating system installed in it (old Windows 98SE). The drive is recognized in BIOS with the proper model and signature, but the computer stays forever trying to find maybe a MBR or other boot information.

I already know WDMarvel it is intended for hardware issues and does not have to do with logical problems (MBR, FATs, etc.). Also I understand that the "slow fix" it is a paliative only, and that do not fix anything in the surface (I am sure the drive is starting to suffer from severe platter damage). So I would be happy if I could only recover some legacy files stored in it. Most of them are programming and/or text files (C, ASM, etc.) so even with corrupted characters I could try to recompose the data. Since the operating system do not boot, I am backing up files by copying through an USB memory in MSDOS mode (of course many files refuse to copy, maybe because of bad sectors, or read errors, with the typical MSDOS message "Cancel, Retry, Omit, Error"). Also, I hope that the slow fix issue in WDMarvel could apply to Caviar drives also (pre-ROYL), since I was reading the instructions to do such fix in manual form editing the 02 module, checksums, etc, but all the information I found was for ROYL drives examples.

So, I would like to know what is the best way to follow now...

Could the "slow fix" issue applied with WDMarvel help somehow with the operating system booting and/or copying of files? (since I want to recover some data, should I clear RE-LO after the slow fix applied, or it is risky to do so?)

Should I try to recover with sector copying through WDMarvel (I suppose that could take forever, since massive extensive errors could be on the disk surface).

I do not want to use any "high level" utility to try to fix MBR, FAT, etc. since they could do a real mess with the drive. I only did executed a native WIN98 MSDOS Scandisk, and obviously it did not pass even the first test, displaying a message regarding LBA errors on the disk. I also did noticed, that in the WDMarvel Config editor dialog box the Max LBA, Destroke Max LBA, DCO Max LBA, and Host Max LBA are assigned a value of 78165359, but the disk printed label has an LBA value of 78165360 (but I do not trust in a printed label). Should I try to adjust the slighty varation in LBA through WDMarvel?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

First try to clone/image it to another disk/file - use ddrescue/hddsuperclone for linux (better) or dmde for win/linux and then try to recover from copy/clone

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data recovery Poland

Thank you @laptokowiec,

I had reviewed the DMDE webpage and it seems a very professional software (and now that I know Dimitry is the author, sure I will obtain a license).