Someone brought in a laptop drive, from a laptop that "didn't boot" anymore.
So connected to a simple ICH5-based system to see what MHDD would do. When booting, the BIOS had a hard time doing a drive identify and eventually timed out.
Meanwhile, the drive was spinning the way it should. No clicks or grinding.

After starting MHDD it was able to ID the drive after 3 or 4 tries. Next, I quickly started to read sectors to file, which at some point after ±2MB halted. Inside the data I got off the drive, the whole MBR, Bootloader, NTFS header stuff, it's all there. This leads me to believe the data on the platters is fine, so the problem has to be elsewhere.

Since there are no overheating/corrosion marks on the PCB, and the drive spins up fine, plus identified itself one time, the power circuits are fine as well (as far as I could measure).

So what's next? Replace the PCB, or could it still be an issue with the heads or maybe the tiny part on the disk platters where information about the disk itself is maintained?

Could be failing heads.

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very unlikely to be PCB related, I've never seen a bad pcb on this family. Anyway, you can't simply swap PCB's on this model.

Agree with mr_spokk, heads would be my first port of call, after proper diagnosis of course.

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Data Recovery Ireland

Kan ook probleem met smart/glist zijn.
Can also be problem with smart/glist.

Dobre

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So, heads or service area are the most likely.. Since I don't have a PC3000 here, I guess I'll be searching for someone who does.
Or is there something you can do without the PC3k?

You don't need PC3K to swap heads, but of course you should make up some proper tests before do it.
And if you don't have experience, don't do it.

But a PC3K would be usefull to do proper tests, like you said, a proper diagnosis is needed. I have never swapped heads, it's (besides messing with the spindle) the only thing I haven't done to HDD's. I do have the tools and access to a cleanroom, but I think I'm going to let the client decide.

Is there a place where I can find out if there is anyone in The Netherlands with a PC3K? I did some research ofcourse, and there are a couple of expensive companies, but that's not exactly the thing I'm looking for.

Oh, and if the heads need replacing, it would ofcourse require replacement heads. Where do I get those? From a working drive? For future DR jobs, I could gain some experience by just using spare/old/dead drives for experimentation, but in this case it's probably not worth the risk.

As for the PC3K, I've read that it's very cheap (compared) if you are in russia and just by one locally, instead of having them sipped over. That is correct, isn't it?

I don't know anyone in Netherlands, even by reference.

For donors, there's some things you may need to match from drive label, or else if you have a nice microscope that might not even be needed.
If you want to start practicing, I would first go for the reading and understanding how hard drives work, how data is written, how things work logically, before proceding into physical changes.

You're right, there's different prices for PC3K depending on world zones. But that's a thing that cannot be changed

i am facing the same issue, with toshiba laptop hard drive, different model:
MK6465GSX
no clicking spinning was good, seems to calibrate but no ID's on bios or datacompass.
i can't connect it to HDdoctor becouse for toshiba i don't have, and i can't connect to PC3000 UDMA cause it is "on the way"
so, listening some comments, i just swap the heads:

on the donor the heads works great ( the heads of the patient )
but on the patien ( the heads of the donor ) have still the same issues ( also very slow in bios and not ID )

so i am guessing me and you are having something related to firmware (glist-smart etc)
(the hdd is making no bad noise and seems to calibrate even)

let you know about my issue next week when i will have in laboratory pc3000 again..

Could also be password locked, but not probable.

usually it could be head problem..

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