Dear all, this is the contents of an email that I sent to another data recovery company I work with. I thought I would share and see if anyone else has similar issues with Western Digital ROYL series drives. For reference I am working with Salvation Data products. Please note that I have already tried cleaning the connector terminals on the PCB. I have not attempted any ROM transfer yet, potentially this will happen this afternoon.

Happy Reading,
John

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The email:
I had a 5 disk RAID-5 Nas box. There were 5 WD ROYL series disk in it. 3 had failed, all with the same fault. Each disk would spin up normally, become ready and all the firmware could be read, when I tried to access a sector it would read OK. However, when I tried to read a second sector quickly afterwards the drive would spin down then up again and give me FF. If I gave it a few seconds waiting time it would read the same sector OK. The problem as resolved by using the matching donor PCB from the good RAID array disks. A direct swap was OK and no adjustment to the ROM was required.


Well I have just received another WD ROYL with a very similar problem. Coincidentally this has the same firmware as the failed disk from the RAID array (which I still have in my possession).

Drive details are:

WD5000AAKS-40YGA0 (from a MAC)
Date 02 Jan 2008
DCM: HHRCHT2MHB
1107-RBHOB
2060-701477-002 REV A
2061-701477-900 AD


I have been able to backup all of the firmware and ROM in the doctor. All the firmware modules pass the check. Again, when I try to access an initial sector is reads fine, but if I click view sector a second time the drive spins down very briefly and then I hear the actuator arm move.


I have removed the PCB. I noticed that on the patient PCB there is slight discolouring on the foam pad where the CPU controller chip is. I am not sure if this a clue to the reason for failure. I have tried swapping over the PCB with a donor from the old RAID array. The donor details are:

WD5000AAKKS-00YGA0
Date: 29 Aug 2007
DCM: HHNCHT2CHN
1107-RBHOB
2060-701477-002 REV A
2061-701477-900 04P


When I start the drive in the doctor it becomes ready. However, it is not possible for me to load the drive parameters from the HDD, I just get an error with only the numbers "6" and "0" in the grey boxes (denoting 6 heads and 0 LBA)

If I load the RES file from the saved version it is not possible for me to access the data areas. I presume that the ROM content may not be the same as it is integrated into the CPU controller chip. As I have a good version of the the ROM from the patient, is it possible for me to reprogram the donor ROM with patient ROM backup?

Do you have any other suggestions? Do you think my donor is a good enough match?

Best wishes,
John

P.S. Bearing in mind this unusual fault has happened on YGA0 revision drives perhaps there is some systematic fault in manufacture? Have you seen this fault before?



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Dr. John C. Reid
Cheadle Data Recovery
Manchester ICT Consultancy
0161 408 4857
http://www.cheadledatarecovery.co.uk

_________________
CDR - Manchester Data Recovery Services
0161 408 4857
http://www.cheadledatarecovery.co.uk/

Just to give an "answer" to my last post.

I have just tried a PCB swap with a good match donor, then I uploaded the saved patient ROM.bin into the donor. After this was complete I saved a copy again and checked the contents to make sure that it had written properly.

After a restart of the drive the LBA values were accessible and the drive did not spin down at each attempt.

I am not sure what is causing the failure. I can only presume it is some kind of PCB fault.

Best wishes,
John

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Dr. John C. Reid
Cheadle Data Recovery
Manchester ICT Consultancy
0161 408 4857
http://www.cheadledatarecovery.co.uk

_________________
CDR - Manchester Data Recovery Services
0161 408 4857
http://www.cheadledatarecovery.co.uk/

Hello,

Yes, you have right.
This is a pcb problem, i have seen a lot of times on different models.
This is a "serial" problem on WD actually i can say: similar like a Seagate 11 issue.
I know the exact problem, the best and easyest solution is reprogram the ROM in MCU and swap the PCB to get the data...

Regards,
Janos

ps: Generally a pcb problem, wich can cause serious data corruption as well, and SA corruption too!

Has anyone come up with a solution to fix this WITHOUT requiring a donor PCB. I ask this as finding a good match donor PCB for Western Digital drives can be really difficult and/or expensive (as I am sure you are aware).

You mention that this is similar to the Seagate .11 series issue. The Seagate .11 series has a relatively simple fix using the command console to fix the 'busy' error (and the LBA 0 error). Is there a similar option that is possible in the ROYL to avoid having to get a donor hard disk?

best wishes,
John

_________________
CDR - Manchester Data Recovery Services
0161 408 4857
http://www.cheadledatarecovery.co.uk/

Donor PCb's shouldn't be to hard to find. Also you should relay the cost of the parts to the customer. A rom rebuild using SA modules as reference on donor pcb should solve your problems.

Expensive? Not when two basic PCB models fix 95% of the problems, and they are reprogrammable . . .

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http://www.datasaversllc.com