I had a WD 2.5" 320GB drive brought in that had been dropped. The heads landed about midway in the platters and seized there. After fixing this, all heads were able to read just fine. About 20% in, Head 3 had some issues, so I just deactivated that, imaged the rest of the drive and then came back and cleaned up those areas Head 3 couldn't image. I think in all there about 600 sectors that couldn't be imaged, so it was a pretty thorough imaging. The customer said that the drive was working fine up until the last time they used it, and then the laptop was dropped.

However, after imaging the drive the main partition shows as being damaged. I can scan and regenerate the partition and all of the folders are intact and the file names look good, yet it seems like only 1 in maybe every 10 files can actually open. The rest show as corrupted. Any idea as to why that would happen when all that was done was the laptop was shut down and it was dropped? I just feel like I'm close to having this done, but the data is garbage for the most part.

Think I have this fixed. Tried a different imager, and the bitmap is showing a lot more data than the other imager did. Not sure if there's a problem with the adapter or what, but something is wrong.

What imager did you use before?
And after?

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My firmware database:
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I have a few DDI stations

Check cables.

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Changed adapters and all is good. Just a weird deal. Glad I tried a different imager / controller. Thanks for looking.