Hi,

Have a Hitachi model HTS723216A7A364, P/N: 0J13241, MLC: DA3954. The drive IDs in DDI and DC. In DDI when you build a heads map and run a media test, you get all Uncorrectable errors (photo attached). And (not to much surprise) when you try to image the drive, all you get is unread sectors (forwards and backwards). In DC the drive goes back and forth from Busy to Error when trying to open the partition.

In Hitachi Doctor, the drive goes ready and you can ID it but it errors at the bottom of the screen when you do ID it. You cannot read the NVRAM, Heads Map, and the FW tab does not show anything to read or diagnose. You can, however, read the ROM in (about the only thing you can do in Hitachi Doctor).

Does this sound like a firmware thing, or could it possibly be that the one head is bad (and it's just ID'ing the drive from its board)?

Dizi

I don't have DDI or DC, but if you're getting errors on every LBA then perhaps you have a bad translator? I get lots of these drives in and everytime it's weak/bad heads, in the cases I get anyway.

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If its weak heads DC has an option for intensive read which ups the power to the heads. Might be worth a look?

Loki

Have you checked all FW modules to check if they are fine?

The firmware module tab shows up as blank, and we don't have a working donor to load in the modules with.

Dizi

What tools are you using?

Might be that the family is not supported yet.

Dmarques,

We've tried DDI, DC, and Salvation Data's HD Doctor, all with no luck. I could believe that Salvation Data doesn't support the drive, but I would think that at least DDI or DC would at least be able to see some data (or a heads test would have better results with a drive that identifies and doesn't click at all).

Dizi

Well, if that family is not supported yet, and there's a problem with any FW module, that beaviour makes some sense.

But to have any more clue about it just checking it.

So sent the drive off to Jono-ats, and with some work they were able to get the data back for us. According to them, it was some new firmware issue PC3K doesn't have a fix for yet, as well as bad/weak heads. Thanks all for the help, and special thanks to Jono-ats for the recovery!

Dizi

Nice

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Data Recovery Cape Town

Good work Jon

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Well done Jon

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