Ok,
after breaking the alignment on several good Samsung drives and re-aligning them, I am pretty sure that the platter alignment of the Samsung drive has been tampered with. At this point there is nothing I can do with the drive. Janos, I have no problem recommending you to the client if you think you may have a chance of success. Just PM me the contact info. Just out of curiosity, do you attempt to read out the signals? As for the WD, I have no Idea. It's about time that Western Digital joins the crowd and provide terminal output. That would make live much easier

...alignment, I use a multi step process, the Microscope is just to determine if the heads are out of alignment. It has worked well for me so far, but maybe you have a better solution. let's talk on pm or messenger.