How to turn off WD Marvell's heads in RAM

[ACE_Admin]

Now it is possible to turn off bad heads on Marvell drives and read the data from the good ones.

Here is an example of fixing Zeus drive with this method. After it was powered on it makes three loud clicks with its heads and then it powers off its spindle motor. Register leds show us [DRD] [DSC] - [ERR] - [AMN].
Your drive may click more times and you should just let it click until it will stop its spindle motor.

After we run utility it show us no ID.

1. Open WDC Marvell utility startup window and select "Kernel mode" option. Then press "Autodetect". Utility should find the correct family.Leave the jumpers in master mode as they were before.

2. Perform command like its shown.

RAM Head map 1.JPG (44.85 KiB) Viewed 38366 times

3. Next dialog box should be displayed to you.

RAM Head map 2.JPG (7.23 KiB) Viewed 39673 times

4. Here is the list of all physical heads. As it unknown what head is damaged , I set all heads to 0th head.

RAM Head map 3.JPG (7.24 KiB) Viewed 39666 times

5. After you pressed ok, perform "Soft reset command" the drive will turn on its motor and this drive id will be displayed correctly.You can preform command Tools->Drive id to refresh the data.

RAM Head map 4.JPG (36.4 KiB) Viewed 38365 times

If it is not possible to start up the drive from 0th head, you should try set 1st instead of it.

6. After the drive started to spin and its ID was shown, go to "RAM Head map change" menu again and set the head map to its original values.Then set soft reset once more. Now the drive is ready to read its data.

7. Run DataExtractor and build heads map. After the head map was built, you can read the data from healthy heads.

[conti]

I used this method successfuly on ZEUS drive:

WD5000KS-00MNB0

8 heads, head 4 was damaged

Thanks for new option Roustam

[manel]

And what about when says Head Map not Found?

[-BR-]

Wow that is FANTASTIC
Congratulations on the great work Acelab support!
-BR-

[AJ2008]

Unfortunately does not work for all ROYL drives, but I have success today with Lynx drive with h4 damaged. Also, works excellent with the WD drives that appear physically fine but access to SA is not possible and many ABR errors

[steven]

never try this on any WDC drive. But seem it will work and maybe one time I will use this fucntion.
BTW. I got confused how to input the value in Head Map RAM.
example. Drive got 2 head only. head 0 was Good and head 1 was bad. what is the value I must to input to Head map RAM for this case ???

and got 6 head. head 3 and 5 was Bad head 0,1,2,4 was Good. what is the value I need to input in Head map RAM ???

thanks

[AJ2008]

never try this on any WDC drive. But seem it will work and maybe one time I will use this fucntion.
BTW. I got confused how to input the value in Head Map RAM.
example. Drive got 2 head only. head 0 was Good and head 1 was bad. what is the value I must to input to Head map RAM for this case ???

and got 6 head. head 3 and 5 was Bad head 0,1,2,4 was Good. what is the value I need to input in Head map RAM ???

thanks

You need replace damaged head number with working head number.

Dive with 2 head, h0 good and h1 bad, change RAM to '0,0' then build head map and uncheck h1

Drive with 6 head and h3 and h5 bad try '0,1,2,0,4,0', but I have not tried this on HDD with more than 1 damaged head, maybe someone can clarify if this is ok with HDD with more than 1 bad head?

[steven]

Ok. thanks frient.. I got it now. So this function will only work if Head 0 was Good. if Head 0 was bad drive will knock and edit RAM will be impossible

[dobrevjetser]

How about the WD's that keep clicking ?
Any solution there?

Dobre

[pcimage]

Me too!

I have a WD4000KS with H6&7 bad, contiuously clicks.

Also a WD7500AACS with H7 bad, and just buzzes with H7 enabled. Disable H7 and it ID's OK.

[pcimage]

Me too!

I have a WD4000KS with H6&7 bad, contiuously clicks.

Also a WD7500AACS with H7 bad, and just buzzes with H7 enabled. Disable H7 and it ID's OK.

[-BR-]

For my experience, even if ID is ok when you disable a head, translator will be invalid after some sectors
Offcourse this can change from family to family
-BR-

[ZeBong]

Hi to all,

Have a Zeus disk with 8 Heads.

The bad Heads is 1,3,5

Can this work in this case ?

[-BR-]

If hdd can boot from head 0 yes

[dobrevjetser]

How can we solve the "Head Map not Found" error ?
In the pc3k window i can see it finds the headmap, but it shows "Head Map not Found" error :s ?

For example i get:

Offset (hex): 4000000
Size: 100000
Map Size: 8
==================================
\x06\x00\x01\x02\x03\x04\x05\x00\x00
\x06\x00\x00\x01\x02\x03\x04\x05\x00\x00

And i get the error "Headmap not found"
Any solution to this ?

Until now, i have not been able to recover a drive with this option; or the drives continue to click forever, or i get "Head Map not Found".

Dobre