Data recovery from faulty WD Elements

[pclab]

What's your USB PCB model and your SATA PCB model?
Usually ROM doesn't corrupt...

 

[McJefferson]

USB is 2060-771961-001 REV B
SATA is 2060-771960-000 REV A

 

[pclab]

That is right..
But as said before, your problem is not on the PCB. You need a tool to diagnose what else is wrong with the drive....

 

[McJefferson]

That is right..
But as said before, your problem is not on the PCB. You need a tool to diagnose what else is wrong with the drive....

You're probably right, it's just weird that with some U12 it's detected but the disk doesnt' move at all, and with others happens exactly the opposite. I read around that the not-spinning discs is a symptom of U12 corruption (disks are disabled if U12 fails its own checksum), so i didn't expected differerent behaviors using the same ROM backup on different PCBs.

However, the SATA PCB will be still eventually useful for diagnostics purposes, as I far I understood it's almost manadtory the HDD to be SATA to proceed with PC3000-like solutions.

 

[Jared]

If the drive is spinning up, you can usually assume the ROM is fine and has passed checksum. As PCLab said, now it's time to address what else is wrong with the drive. Could be a firmware issue, could be one failed head, could be something else.

The drive getting ID but not spinning isn't necessarily better. What you were seeing was just the PCB returning a default kernel ID when it gives up. Now, with a properly adapted SATA PCB, the drive is probably getting stuck busy halfway through initialization instead. It's progress, but you may still be stuck without a tool like PC-3000 to address and fix whatever else is going on.

 

[McJefferson]

What you were seeing was just the PCB returning a default kernel ID when it gives up.

Interesting. So guess I'll stick with SATA.

Too bad that looks like there's no way to check at least the firmware by myself without a PC3000 or similar ultraexpensive device.

 

[pclab]

If it was a Seagate you could use some terminal cable adapter and check it, but on WD it's not possible.

 

[Jared]

on WD it's not possible

I mean, it's technically "possible" you'd just need to know all the vendor-specific ATA commands. Problem is, no one who's done all that reverse engineering is going to share that information. Which is why they lock it down in a hardware/software combo tool like PC-3000 and you have to pay into funding their work.

 

[McJefferson]

I mean, it's technically "possible" you'd just need to know all the vendor-specific ATA commands. Problem is, no one who's done all that reverse engineering is going to share that information. Which is why they lock it down in a hardware/software combo tool like PC-3000 and you have to pay into funding their work.

And that explains why there simply isn't a realiable superchinese cheap clone of such PC3000 solution: cloning the hardware isn't the real task there. Makes sense.

 

[DigitalVeriKurtarma]

Well I have a kind of repair lab myself so maybe I wouldn't mind to have another tool around, even if I don't plan to use it a lot, if it has a reasonable price, ofc. Also I'm not much interested on what's on my hard drive (I can barely remember), it's more about learning new stuff I stil haven't look around for those PC3000, is something so expensive/hard to find? No cheaper alternatives?

I actually asked a quotation to a local lab in my country, they said it may cost around 600€! I understand that it's probably a small price for really valuable data, but that's definitely not my case

Could you post full model number.