I have a WD5000AAKS-41TMA0.
The drive spins up and goes to ready with the correct ID.
I am able to read and save all service modules with no errors.
Can read only one user sector at a time then the drive goes busy.
I can’t read any other sector until I cycle the power.
Hardware and software resets do nothing.
I can select any single sector on the drive after power cycle and the data seems correct so this indicates the heads are OK.
I tried Data Extractor and Data Compass.
Neither gets anything more than one sector at a time without cycling power for every sector.
Any ideas?

Tried in reverse?

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

You read one sector and it locks up.
You can't go forward or reverse or any other sector until you cycle power.
The drive does take about 20 seconds to become ready after power cycle

Translator?

Just try reverse imaging right from the back.

See what happens

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PC Image Data Recovery
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Sean, forward or reverse is the same. That's why I vote either for translator or ROM.

is there a copy of rom in SA for these drives?

Yes, I know he said that, but I was just checking it was the same throughout the whole drive.

I got one case where it's bad until 67%, then from there till the end it's OK.

Other people on the Deepspar forum have almost the same scenario.

I regen'd my translator and it's unchanged.

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Yes, there is.

Recreated the ROM for my drive, same fault

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PC Image Data Recovery
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New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

SA and Heads tested ok on a similar drive I had (320GB). In my case, first 33% of drive was unreadable, causing drive to power cycle on each sector using UDMA. I was able to read random individual sectors within the first 33% of the drive, but was unable to clone with Deepspar. Using Data Extractor, I set the read sector size from 256 to variations of 2,4,6 or 8. Using 8, it would read intermittently and power cycle, dropping to 2,4 or 6 gave me good stability and I finally got a 100% image but it took a few days!!

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Data Recovery Ireland

I did a regenerate translator using Salvation Data’s HDD Dr.
It completed with no errors. The drive still works the same.
I used Data Compass in the “intensive read” mode.
I used both PIO and UDMA mode.
The Salvation data guys logged in remotely to my machine.
After about a half an hour they gave up and said the drive has “bad servo”.
I gave it to a friend with the latest PC-3000 to let him have a shot at it.
I did not try the PCB or various sector sizes yet.

At this point a Hw problem could also be. I vote for signalling problems between pcb and mha or something related to MCU/memory. Can you make up a compatible pcb?

its a PCB issue. I have faced this problem couple of time. Agreed with BlackST

DF

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DF
www.datatracksystem.net

PCB no change.
I put a new set of heads in and the sucker is reading like a champ.
I can't explain why that worked.
It seems some of my most crazy problems end up being the heads.
Thanks for all the help.

Interesting... How did you match the latest head set? Or it was just a 'chance' ?

You just have to match the 6th and 7th digit of the DCM number counting from the left.
The WD5000AAKS must also match.