It's a pleasure to have read posts and stickys in this forum. I tried to educate myself the best i could, so i'm hear seeking reassurance that i've got it right, or someone to chime in and tell me I'm mistaken and the solution is magically easy and/or affordable. Being poor and losing (sentimental) data is a sad combination. Maybe i should have billed for all the computers i've fixed over the years...sigh.

Everything about this drive seems normal, except for the I/O error. Bios detects, nothing burnt, spins up nice, size is correct, no corrosion, smart info would make you think it's new - just no logical access to the data or partition at all. I've never seen a failure like this before, so i'm blaming the pcb and not the user (me). The WD 1tb green is nearly identical to the one in the awesome "inside a Hard Drive" sticky article (wd10EARS), but mine is WD10EADS and the 8 pin chip is missing from it's designated home on mine. So please correct me if i am wrong in thinking that; my wd10eads is a level 3 HD, with bios on the platter, or inside the 4 sided chip, or both, and there is nothing I can do with brains, forum, and coffee to fix it. So i'm having to send it away to donordrive.com?

I thank you in advance for your advice, thoughts or comments.

"Will rake leaves or perform amazing stupid human tricks in exchange for data recovery. Anyone need help with their BlueWave Reader?"

P.S. This drive was in an external enclosure and started getting slow at initialising, as the head would hunt several times. Once is was initialised and powered on, it worked perfectly. I had it powered off, but it quit now that i have afforded a replacement drive.

This is not a pcb problem, more likely a firmware problem.

Bosse

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Rescue IT Datarecovery service Sweden
Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
http://www.rescue-it.se

What if you open the disk with a Hex Editor? do you see anything there?

If it's out of a WD MyBook then it will be encrypted.

If DIY is your only option then try and clone it to a good WD drive of same capacity, using non-windows tool, like dd_rescue or Media Tools Pro, and then if that's successful hook the clone up to the usb bridge board from the WD chassis.

Usual disclaimers for DIY, you could lose everything and render the drive unrecoverable. So if then data is really important then save up for DR.

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

This drive was originally in a Ximeta, or IOCell NDAS / usb enclosure. I just noticed while accessing smart data with HD Tune, that the 'power on' time is reported as zero. So i don't think it's reading correctly. WD Data Lifeguard diags fails the short smart test with unknown error.

If that is your sector 0, it does not seem right to me. It's too "empty" (too many 0) and nothing about boot data.

I presume you've tried changing cables and physical port on your mother board?

Are you saying that you're not getting any SMART data even when it's directly connected to your computer via SATA? I read somewhere that a USB bridge interface could cause SMART unreadable. So it's best read through a direct SATA connection.

If your hex editor allows you to search through the whole hard disk, try searching for a filename that you know, assuming that this is not encrypted.

CrystalDiskInfo or HD Sentinel can often obtain SMART data when HD Tune and DLG fail.

It might be worth retrieving the drive's firmware modules (ROM and SA):

http://sediv2008.narod.ru/Easy3.9Passwo ... 567890.rar
http://sediv2008.narod.ru/Settings.rar

These will show us the defects and SMART data.

I suspect that the file system may be proprietary or Linux based. If there is a standard MBR partition table in sector 0, then it would be located at offsets 0xBE - 0xFD.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

The drive is currently on internal MB sata header. Identical results with a second cable and alternate stat header. I have tried it attached to another pc too. I'm very sure the partition was ntfs. I have 2 other funtioning IOCell ndas drives of the same size that are working fine if we need to confirm. They are virtual scsi (or usb) and characteristics are as if they are attached to the motherboard.

A text search with the hex editor seems stuck in the mud without progress. Paging down is very sluggish, and sadly on the first few pages, other than the first two lines of data, it is all zero's.

HD Tune, HD sentinel, Crytaldiskinfo will access smart data, but i think the drive is providing them with bogus data

HD sentinel reports the drive health as excellent, but the short self test fails with unknown fatal error. The short test can read the model and serial number. The total repoted uptime = 4 hours and start/stop count = 1 are obviously wrong The Values seem to reset to zero hours, and start/stop = 1 after a power off cycle. The values are retained after a warm reboot. CrystalDiskInfo agrees with HDsentinel.

Data Recovery software can see the drive and 'unpartitioned space', or windows wants to initialise the disk. All that is ever found is the drive tho, no folders or data.

this is the strangest failure i have ever seen. I thank you all for your time consideration. if anyone is curious enough for a good head scratcher i can provide a teamviewer or remote desktop connection. I consider myself a pretty good problem solver or identifier, but this really has me baffled.

I haven't had any luck with SeDiv (win764). Exception errors. I've noticed now that the bios does not detect this drive, although it is still present and accountable under windows. i think hope is fading fast!

Try running SeDiv under Windows XP, if you can.

Can you see any data further into the drive, say at sector 10,000?

It may be worth trying to apply the "slow fix" to your drive, but I would first examine the drive's firmware modules before proceeding.

See http://www.alexsoft.org/viewtopic.php?t=998

... and viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29187

WDMarvel has a one-click solution to "deal with slow responding". You can purchase a one-month licence.

http://wdmarvel.com/ru/

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Ok, SeDiv is running in XP. the drive is not detected in the system bios, but it is detected by the nVidia chipset in XP device manager. I have disabled SMART in the bios, but the only options i have for this sata is auto / LBA and two others. Under windows device manager, i have disabled the secondary ide controller.

The motherboard has four ide channels, and four sata channels.
system disk is WD on ide primary. SeDiv autodetec will identify the drive, and then a bunch of red errors in the log.

The problem disk is WD on Sata primary. SeDiv autodetect on sees it as a WD without model or serial number, and then a bunch of red errors in the log.

I've probably not got my bios settings correct, as i'm a bit confused.

I'm not sure if my bios is capable of matching the settings you have shown in your attached images. I'm also unclear what you mean with the red arrows pointing from the disabled smart setting. am i supposed to disable multisector transfer and 32 bit transfer also? I don't see those as options in this asus bios (pentium D variety)

I haven't found any documentation for SeDiv, i've only read that even with the free version, it's easy to screw up the drive, so i'm not up for experimenting with it.

The WDMarvel site is mystifying in russian i think! This drive is a WD Caviar green 1tb. i'm not sure about trying that!
Just to add as it sits, SeDiv can't read the model/serial, but HD sentinel and other software can.