WD10EAVS with one failed head-how to clone?

[drmilos]

I have WD10EAVS-32D7B1.

ROM Head Map 2 3 4 5 6 7.

With all heads active drive shows ERR and stops.

Deactivated head 2 in ROM (i.e. leaving 3 4 5 6 7 active), power on/off, drive shows DRD/DSC but can't access data.

Change RAM head map to 2 3 4 5 6 (instead of 3 4 5 6 7), soft reset and I can read drive ID (I can hear some soft clicking from the drive). I can also read sectors 0 and 63 (and quite a few other), albeit with some delay.

Start DE, build heads map, all six heads show in the map. Allow only soft reset on loss of readiness (to keep RAM info). Try every head from the map, one by one, no go. How can I clone this drive (five working heads) - I guess if I can read sectors in PC3K utility I should be able to clone the drive somehow.

[AJ2008]

With 6 heads active in ROM, total capacity is distributed between 6 zones. when you modify in ROM the head count, all capacity is distributed between 5 zones, zones change size, head switches are made too early, recovery wont be possible.

you need to change in RAM, not ROM. Alternatively, read SA while map is changed in ROM, then use hotswap donor to reach good heads and image.

[dmarques]

From your post, seems that the drive can read SA.
If that is so, I think with head map in RAM you'll be able to access data.

[drmilos]

Problem solved, I will briefly described what I've done.

The drive was showing symptoms as per my original post.

The only way to have the drive DRD/DSC and ID was to disable head 2 in ROM - as datalabace and AJ2008 rightly said it's not possible to clone the drive with a head disabled in ROM.

So, with head 2 disabled in ROM I started utility and set RAM head map to 2 3 4 5 6. Soft reset, restart utility in Normal mode, DRD/DSC and ID OK.

I was able to clear SMART - this turned out to be the winning move.

Set ROM head map back to normal (all heads enabled), power off/on, DRD/DSC OK, ID OK.

Start DE, heads map, clone all heads except 0, no problems.

After that clone head 0 only, lots of reset and off/on but finished with less than 100 errors. All data in the bag, case closed.

Thank you datalabace and AJ2008 for explanations and pointing me in the right direction

Why did the drive show symptoms of a failed head (apparently, one head is weak but not dead) and the problem was with SMART I don't know.

[AJ2008]

Why did the drive show symptoms of a failed head (apparently, one head is weak but not dead) and the problem was with SMART I don't know.

Its not symptoms of bad head. I guess that it stayed BSY for some time with no knocking, then spindle stops and at status register only 'ERR' is highlighted? This happens with bad Zone table, bad DIR table, bad ROM modules etc

Head symptoms is clear knocking, and on spindown status register will show DSC and DRD.