Hello,

i'm just recovering data from a WD3200JB.

Disk does not spin up correctly, but i did some tricks to be able to get to data...

What i did!

I got 2 working donor drives - from one i changed heads - fine, but drive still does not spin up correctly itself.

so what i did now, started the working drive - Standby - changed PCB to the other one.

and pres spin up - yeeeahha all heads test passed, SA reading successfully, but not neccessary anymore, tried to access data - see the folders of the FAT32 partition, but if i try to copy files, most of them are faulty.

so, i started cloning the drive - on Friday...

i played around with some settings and so on - it reads everything successfully, i can see data in it, but it's very very slow..

from friday till now i'm able to copy 236Mio Sectors - from 625 Mio.

Sometimes the disk reads 100.000 without problems, after that slow, and so on, so i tried some settings with skipping 100.000 and much more.

In log i can see tons of "Drive is not ready" entries, of course, it's another PCB and so on.

Any ideas for give that a boost - without turning the drive off again!?

Hi! Have you done a head map in DE? Maybe you have a weak head and you can clone firstly with good head and then with weak one

Best.

F

Hello,

no not for now, i thought about it, but never did before, so i'll search for it, and give it a try.

Thx.

sorry again, but what is the fastest way to find out which head is slow?

Because on Surface test all are fast if i remember correctly

OK, i see... it's quite easy.

for now best solution seems to disable all heads exepting 1 - now it's fast with this one... i'll write the result

Thanks

Head 0 Ready - Head 4 ready nearly 100%

All others seems to be slow - i'll wait for it.

2 out of 6
i wish you luck

Do you think it will be helpful to change the heads again?
because i think if i'll wait for it the year is over...

have you tried the heads on the donor ?
if so, is it acceptable speed ?
if you don't want to wait until the end of the year, why not extract only the important data

I did not change them back to donor, but first they work normally yes.

And i just want to do that, but a lot of files i tested to revocer where faulty, so i'll go save and clone complete disk, clone the clone, and then checkdisk

If each head can read good on some sectors, surface is damaged, am i right?

it is not recommended to run chkdsk on a drive for data recovery purposes. It causes damage to the file system.

_________________
Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Yes, i know, for that i clone the clone before, sometimes chkdsk also helps

for now i have 437Mio sectors cloned successfully, don't know if data is OK:) but i'll see.

I did each head seperatly with 250ms Time for loss of readiness.

the last run i'll turn on all heads and set the time much higher, and hope it won't take too long.

around 140 Million sectors left, i think i've to do something, because i can only read with 0-6kB/s - so it will take half a year for the rest

ideas?

i think heads are not the problem - because the other sectors was ready "quickly".

maybe some software / FW trick?

or should i try other heads too`?

Head swap, drive did not start correctly.

Start donor -standby - swap PCB - Run bad drive now OK - read id - still the 320GB disk (donor of course)
tried to slow fix - yes but is it possible to check it if it is done correctly?

so in that case i've wrong SA - correct?

i talked also to PC3000 support a lot, and they also did alot, but they informed me, if i can see the cloned sectors green, Data is accessable, i also can see the folder list, but just main folders and files of root.

But you mean, with my procdeure i'm not able to access data?
why the support do not hint me with that?

i'm using software tools of course for recovery...

i also recovered a few files for testing of the root... - some are working, some others not...

so what you think?

everything for nothing?

sounds logical, but not good for me.

thx, i'll think about it...

OMG, you are talking all along about HOT swap, and i don't know why, but i was thinking you are talking about HEAD swap

Yeah, big problem is, that the original PCB (and ROM) is gone...

Many thx for your useful tips

i'll read everything again a few times when i'm not tired.

is it ?
one of the simplest things to fix especially now that you have a donor drive