WD2500 - Unreadable Sectors

[Mark Lee]

Hello all,

I'm hoping someone can help me with this problem as it's another one I have never seen before.

I have a WD2500-75HBC0 250GB drive in for recovery.

The drive is being detected by Windows, but in drive manager it is showing as uninitialised.  When I plug it into the Atola and PC3K, both detect the drive OK, so the System Area is being read, but cannot read any sectors.

I plugged it into the Deepspar to try and image it, however every sector on the drive is showing as unreadable.  I did a head map, and tried switching off individual heads (there are 6), and also tried reverse imaging in case the faulty sectors are at the start, but all I get are red sectors on the Deepspar.

I've never seen a drive where every sector is unreadable, so I'm assuming this is going to be a head or firmware issue?

Can anyone give me any pointers here?

Many thanks for any help,

Mark

[sup...@rambuscomputers.co.uk]

Can you read the SA?

If so have you tested the modules?

Could be translator? 

On my ace lab pc3000 course i had a practical test where i could read the SA but the users data was not accessible. 

Did the regenerate translator with plist & then had access. 

Loki

Sent from my iPhone 4S

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[IT LAND]

Hi Mark,

I had the exact same issue with a 2TB WD HDD few weeks ago. I was in the same position as yourself.

Jono advised that the issue in my case was that one or more heads are damaged and therefore in these models it won't read the data area as the teste of all heads didn't pass. I don't know if the same case but i would suspect so. In my case translator regenrator didn't work.

Hope that helps,

Oded 

On Thursday, May 17, 2012 6:52:12 PM UTC+10, Loki wrote:

Can you read the SA?

If so have you tested the modules?

Could be translator? 

On my ace lab pc3000 course i had a practical test where i could read the SA but the users data was not accessible. 

Did the regenerate translator with plist & then had access. 

Loki

Sent from my iPhone 4S

On 17 May 2012, at 08:41, Mark Lee <mark.l...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello all,

I'm hoping someone can help me with this problem as it's another one I have never seen before.

I have a WD2500-75HBC0 250GB drive in for recovery.

The drive is being detected by Windows, but in drive manager it is showing as uninitialised.  When I plug it into the Atola and PC3K, both detect the drive OK, so the System Area is being read, but cannot read any sectors.

I plugged it into the Deepspar to try and image it, however every sector on the drive is showing as unreadable.  I did a head map, and tried switching off individual heads (there are 6), and also tried reverse imaging in case the faulty sectors are at the start, but all I get are red sectors on the Deepspar.

I've never seen a drive where every sector is unreadable, so I'm assuming this is going to be a head or firmware issue?

Can anyone give me any pointers here?

Many thanks for any help,

Mark

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[Mark Lee]

Hello,

Thanks for the pointers so far.

The PC3K and Atola will recognise the make/model and serial number and size of the drive, but I cannot read the SA.

If one or more heads are faulty, then I guess the only route is a head swap.  The problem there is I haven't had much luck swapping heads out on older WD drives as I always have alignment problems.

I'll see if I can get a donor and follow Franks helpful guide to headstack swaps from his website to see if that works.

Mark

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[Frank]

Hello Mark

I had a drive which was similiar. It had difficuties reading the data. After many hours of "Dorking" with it, I set the PC3000 block read to 1 block as well as backwards. Yep, it could only read one block at a time. Took three weeks to get the data, but the data was good.  Give that a try before the head swap.

 

Enjoy

Frank

[Mark Lee]

Hello all,

I had a look at the translator regeneration, but haven't done it yet.  The option in the PC3K advises to back the user data up first, and I haven't managed to even pull a good sector off this drive!

Frank - I tried the block setting you suggested on both the PC3K and the Atola, but both are getting nothing, just a bunch of errors!

I'm going to source a donor drive and attempt the head swap I think.

Mark

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[Jono]

You have to diagnose these properly before you take action (e.g. a
heads swap).

Head swaps are tricky in the Hawk family because of top cover
alignment and narrow service track issues. You'll only make things
worse if you miss the diagnosis.

Your problem is most likely bad translator, or bad module (e.g. 31
Relo Block).

[Mark Lee]

Hi Jono,

Thanks for the input so far.

I'm relatively new to this type of data recovery work.  I work for the UK government, and I've been given all these tools but very little training.  The only course they would pay for was Scott's, as I could do a distance learning course and wouldn't have to travel!

The previous guy has left me with a PC3K, Atola Insight, Deepspar FDI and a Flash Extractor.  I'm teaching myself how to use these, and I'm getting pretty good at Hitachi and Samsung drives.  Western Digitals are pretty new to me, I don't see many.

Can I ask, if I regenerate the translator, will that make recovery of data harder if it doesn't work, as at the moment I have not backed anything up from this drive?  Any backup I try fails.

Kind regards,

Mark

[Frank]

Hello Mark
If you were left with this equipment then please check with the manufacturers to see if you still have a technical support agreement. With the Tech Support both Ace Laboratory and DeepSpar ensure you are successful with their equipment.

PC3K and Flash Extractor for these please contact Sasha Sheremetov at sa...@acelab.ru when you contact him explain that you took over the section and have the following equipment Pc3000 and Flash Extractor, give him the serial numbers from both pieces of equipment and ask him to check the status of the Tech Support. If Tech support is expired, they still have a great forum and you can go to their download section and retrieve manuals on the different hard drives as well as trouble-shooting techniques.

Deepspar FDI contact Serge Shirobokov at in...@deepspar.com   Provide him the same information and see if there is any tech support for the equipment. You can also ask to use their forum.

I have worked with both of these people and they exemplify customer support.

Frank

[Mark Lee]

Hi Frank,

I have spoken to Sasha and Serge already.  The PC3K has tech support, and so does the Deepspar.  I am in the process of getting funds from the boss to buy a new Deepspar, as the units we have are a bit old.

The Flash Extractor is made by soft-centre.ru, and again we have paid for support in place.  We also have the PC3K SSD chip reader.

I've enjoyed teaching myself a lot of this stuff, but I could use a course in using the PC3K.  Do you know of anywhere in the UK, as my department will not pay for me to go to Russia!

Thanks for helping,

Mark

Frank

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[Frank]

Hello Mark
I do not know of anyone in the UK that provides training.  The other option is trying to go to DeepSpar in Canada. They to hold the classes for the PC3K which is very informative. When I first purchased the PC3K I took their one day course which gave me a good foundation on how to use the equipment. About 6 months later I went back and took the other courses that they offer.

Next week I will be in Russia taking Ace Laboratory's NAND technology course and I am looking forward to it.

If you have questions then please ask.
Frank

[sup...@rambuscomputers.co.uk]

I took Ace Labs PC3000 UDMA & PC3000 Flash SSD training courses in Russia last march. Very intensive but worth every penny. Would like to go back again in a years time as they mentioned an advanced course is being discussed. 

Loki

Uk

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[Jono]

If you can't back up resources, then rebuilding translator won't work,
as there are significant issues.

A good rule of practice is never do anything that you can't recover
from if it goes wrong. In other words, back up before you manipulate
firmware. And if you can't back up, then I would be very cautious
about doing any FW mods except replacing bad modules.

Can you brick a drive rebuilding translator? Not usually. You might
turn previously good modules into bad ones, so that is why backing up
is imperative.

WWSD? (What would Scott do?)