Yes, I'm a noob. I'll try not to sound like one.

No I won't open it.

But I'm curious if this model, WDC1000 (100 Gig, early 2002) would put the defect reallocation table in NVRAM. Any way I could find out?

It occurs to me that if a table, in NVRAM, could be damaged by overheating, or power surge, age, gremlins, or what-have-you, then the file system of an, ahem, mature drive would be instantly mangled.

Also, if it's combined with one or more other failures, any read errors (real or apparent) would cause sectors to be replaced by random chunks of other data.

It'd make any attempt at data recovery that much harder...

Is there any way, for a layman like me, to shut off reallocation? Just avoid rebooting?

This one sounds improbable - can clone software get to those spare sectors on the chance that the reallocation table has been wiped? It'd only be good for tiny files, but it might be useful.


If I leave the drive running, until I finish trying recovery, is there any chance that idling would increase platter damage? (Internal debris, head problem...). Or will the heads park when idle?

If I let the drive go into sleep mode, will there be a chance of damaging the SA, when it spins back up?

I've got vaugely related questions, but perhaps those should go in another topic? (Suspicions about the PCB, some uncommon technical questions about manipulating things in backup).