I have a WD400JB that will initialise and be recognised, but when I try to scan it in any program it cannot read any sector. Ubuntu recognises the full model name and firmware, and ddrescue will try to clone but just go through the entire drive forwards and backwards within a few minutes, but not able to read a single sector.

Does anyone know what could cause this issue? The drive has been opened but I didn't think the alignment issue applicable to some of these older WD drives was the case for the JB series. I thought maybe bad heads, but how would it know what sector it was trying to read if the heads were producing no signal?

The data isn't important enough for proper data recovery but I'm interested to try to work out what could cause such an odd issue.

Thanks

Are you able to obtain a SMART report with a tool such as CrystalDiskInfo?

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Could be translator issue. Do you have any tool to work with this old model?

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Some sort of firmware issue, damaged mod(s) I expect.

You'll require some sort of fw tool to check this.

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The issue isn't odd. As others have stated, it is most likely a firmware issue and some bad sectors. It likely would fall at the bottom end of the pricing scale at most reputable data recovery labs.

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Luke
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I suspect that the drive may be repairable with free tools. If it can report SMART data, then I believe I can help the OP retrieve the other firmware modules.

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I've attached photos of the SMART output from HD Sentinel and Crystal disk. Definitely doesn't look like its reading it correctly.

Try to dump the drive's ROM and firmware modules using NazYura's tools.

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=28&p=826

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Would Mavr_r be the one I want? (Read Modules On WD-Hdd (For Marvell CPU))

In 32bit Windows XP in command prompt after entering
mav_r.com 10 logfile.log

It thinks about it for a while then give an error which says
Error: !!! Drive busy time out expired!!!
Status = -XX-XX

Do I need to be running it in DOS?

Woops wrong thread

NazYura's tools run from real DOS, not a DOS box in Windows. They expect to find your drive on one of the standard ISA ports, 0x1F0 or 0x170.

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Ok using mavr_r I got it to work in DOS, it outputted 86 .MOD files. Is that all the firmware and ROM files? Or do I need to run one of the other utilities too?

I would capture all the tracks (MAVR_T) and ROM (MAVR_FL) for completeness, but the MODs should be enough. Can you ZIP them and upload them?

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Ok done, got all 3 and put them in folders in the zip which can be found here

http://www.filedropper.com/mavr

Module 32 (and two others) is missing, as is track 2. The copies on head 1 are also missing.

I'll do more analysis in the morning.

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Here are the missing/damaged modules:


Module 32 is the translator. It needs to be regenerated. Unfortunately the copy on head 1 is not present in the dump. A partial dump of track 2 may have been useful, but it appears that NazYura's tools will only retrieve complete tracks. Likewise for track 8.

Here is a list of WD modules and their functions:

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1176#p5285

SMART modules 20, 21, and 22 appear to be corrupt. They need to be cleared.

ID20=SMART & Log Current
ID21=SMART & Log Current
ID22=SMART & Log Current
ID23=SMART & Log Clear
ID24=SMART & Log Main

You may wish to take up Spildit's generous offer. Otherwise we could use MHDD (ver 4.5, not 4.6) to send the Regen Translator command to the drive. Let us know what you decide.

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ISTM this is a Marvell drive (pre-ROYL).

IIUC, it requires a different VSC for translator regeneration. :?

http://yura.puslapiai.lt/files/wd/mhdd/

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

The grown defects list (G-list, MOD 34) is empty.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

ISTM module 32 is the relo-list in this model. :? If so, then it just needs to be cleared, AFAIK. We could try recovering it with a partial track read using an MHDD script. In fact only the first sector would need to be read. The remaining 7 sectors would be zero-filled. I think it is DIY-able.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

We were recently working on your WD400JB-00ENA0 drive. The scripts I wrote for that were for "WD cyl 32" architecture. The OP's drive is a WD400JB-00FMA0 which is Marvell architecture. The directory modules for the two architectures are 41h and 01h, and the ID modules are 42h and 02h, respectively.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.