Hi,

Have here a Toshiba MQ01UBD100 with drive rev. AZA AA00/AX001U which is dectected but not initialized.

What is OK
- The blue diode lights on when powered from an USB 3 port.
- The drive name is detected.
- HD Sentinel reports that the drive is 100% Ok and display its SMART values, which are all Ok.
- The drive spins smoothly, without any bad noise.
- The spindle doesn't make any clicking or so.
- The capacity is detected in Windows disk manager.
- In Linux, lsblk is detecting the drive too.
- The PCB seems globally responding well.
For instance, ddrescue is respsponding (eg. you can specify an offset), but not able to copy any data.

What is not working
- The drive is not initialized and it is impossible to inialize it (Cyclical Redundancy Count error)

I assume either some corrupted SA module or a hardware issue like bad head.
Should I first try to update the firmware ?
Any software to advice for a Toshiba, possibly working with USB ?

N.B. The USB PCB is G003250A and from what I read on the forum, the SATA PCB G003138A would be compatible.

I would guess it's a translator issue or an issue with the G-List not reading. Do you have any tools like PC-3000 to work with?

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

Pro doesn't use usb to work with broken drives, because it's almost not possible to get access to broken drive through usb. Usb is okay only if drive fully functional. And I agree with data-medics, it could be translator or broken G-list and bad\weak head(s). Those problems could be solved by special software or ata terminal and ata-commands.

This is true, we virtually always convert to SATA connection.

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Thanks.
Yes, acquiring a SATA PCB seems the way to go.
The problem is very similar to thus of the crappy WD Elements, a.s.o.

@data-medics: I don't have yet a PC-3000 or similar tool.
Maybe connecting the drive in SATA and using MHDD ?
Also have WDR-Demo, but I'm not sure if it can work also with drives other than Western Digital ones.