I've got a case here which has me truly baffled. I've handled a lot of similar cases, but this one I just can't figure out.

Drive came in it was head stuck. I freed the heads up carefully.
On power up the drive fully ID's shows capacity everything. I backed up all modules and tracks without any issue.
When I try to read a sector it gets ABR error instantly.
Tried editing head map in RAM but it would go unstable as soon as I soft reset it.
Checked all modules in directory and all important modules pass check for both head 0 and 1.
Did a heads test and found H5 to be faulty.
Replaced heads with donor ones, and all heads pass test now.
I've confirmed that all heads can both read and write data.
However, I still get ABR error on any attempt to read sectors like there is a translator issue.
I've tried subbing out the service area regions.
I've even completely moved the SA from heads 0 and 1 to heads 2 and 3.
I've tried regenerating the translator
I've tried rebuilding the P-list, then again rgenerating the translating.
I've done the slow responding fix, and tried disabling things in module 02
I've tried pretty much everything I can think of and no matter what I can't get this thing to read a sector.

Any ideas? Any WD masters who'd like to take a quick look remotely? I've already had another tech look at it via TeamViewer and he's stumped too.

I'm certainly willing to throw some hard cash to whoever can solve this one. At this point I care more about figuring this out than I do about the money from the case.

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One other odd behavior I observe is that the drive goes unstable and seems to hard reset itself whenever you give a soft reset command to it.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

OK, I think I figured out what's happening. Looks like there is a slight variation in the sliders. Probably they are close enough to get SA access but not data access.

Posted some pictures on this thread: https://www.data-medics.com/forum/wd-my ... t1569.html

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

What are the DCM of the patient and donor?

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DCM's both contain NTJ as the critical digits. Date is within a few months, but the country code is different. Accd to PC-3000 they have the same preamp, but I guess that's probably the preamp chip only and not necessarily the sliders too.

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You did get ABORT with the orginal heads, remember ? So the original problem was already ABORT errors even when reading LBA with the good heads.

What is your PCB number ? Did you try a PCB swap ? Some PCBs can develop that specific problem.

Did you try HOT SWAP ? Maybe "something" is preventing the translator from initializing. If you can read LBA with HOT SWAP then just move translator to donor and HOT SWAP again.

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Tried hot swap with tracks written to another drive, tried different PCB's. It is none of that.

I think the original abort errors may have been related to H5 being bad. This model is well known to have this type of issue if any head is bad.

But, I think the reason I get it with the donor heads may be related to the sliders. I notice that when I put the patient heads into the donor drive it also gets abort errors if I try to read any sectors, so that confirms to me it's either a compatibility issue or at least that it'll give the same error with a single bad head.

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Ok, thanks for sharing.

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OK, case solved. I finally found heads that worked for it by using a drive that in no way should be compatible. Pretty much everything you normally would match didn't, but the heads worked - case solved, data recovered.

I guess the traditional logic that if you can read SA and get the drive to ID the heads are actually compatible isn't always true.

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thanks for sharing

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