Hello friends
I have Hitachi travel star 40 Gb hard disk. whish has damage head. I have changed the head with another doner hard disk but it knocks. What could be done to recover the hard disk. Rom is OK.

Please help
DF

Have you swapped heads to donor drive again to check if they are ok?

yes Sir i have checked and they are ok. Doner is working fine.

Thanks

DF

PCB is tested and ok too?

How many platters the drive has?

1 platter and 2 head. PCB and NV ram are ok

Df

Have you tried to remove the platter to check if it has any visible damage?

Regards.

Hi,

I would not remove the platter, since the donor drive works after swapping back the MHA, so it is not damaged, probably the surface is neither, and there is a high risk of misalignment of the platter after putting it back.
Check the MLC codes on the patient and donor, they should match.

regards,
pepe

Codes are identical. I will try again in night. And will not remove the platter. will try again headswap.

Patient 08K2811 H69541- N5X431- 0ABN
Doner 08K2811 H69514- N5J431- 447D

Thanks and regards

DF

number mistyped please read this as correct.

Patient 08K2811 H69541- N5X431- 0ABN
Doner 08K2811 H69541- N5J431- 447D

DF

Hello again

I have changed the hard disk head again but it keeps knocking but now if I change Donner PCB to patient disk get DRD and DSC. but does not detect. What am i missing. i really need the data.

Please Help

DF

Probably drive has SA physical damage

Does drive spin with donor PCB?

YES drive detects ok now recognizes its model serial # capacity correctly but does not let data access all the modules are ok. 1 more thing hard disk heads initializes and reaches till center of the media so i doubt it could be media fault also. Please correct me if I am wrong. Need data so pleas advice.

DF

How did you diagnose the original head stack w/ a bad head?

There's more than likely some light platter scoring. If you have a microscope you should be able to see it. If not, one technique I use is take a swab and dip it into 99.9% isopropyl or distilled water, and drag the swap across the platter. Most of the time, you will see the the sillouette of the scoring, because tiny amounts of the liquid will settle in the crevices.

Original head was heaving problem because Patient HDD has NVRam ok it was accable in Safe mode. even after changing PCB from doner and writing NVram disk was not accessible . but after changing head it was ok.

I think there must be scratch on the PATIENT hdd. well i will try once more.

Thanks

DF

It is often problem on IBM laptop drives - media damage