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Data Recovery on a 1TB Western Digital WD10TMVW

/ / Data Clinic Ltd, News

A Hard Drive Recovery Case Study

Western Digital WD10TMVW HDDDrive: 1TB WD10TMVW

Faults

  • WD ‘slow response’ firmware problem
  • Weak head
  • Use of microjog to source a compatible donor hard drive

Failure Symptoms

We received an enquiry from a customer reporting that his drive was running very slowly, so slow that he’d left the drive overnight attempting to access a folder. When he returned to it in the morning the computer had hung.

Recovery

Western Digital WD10TMVW HDD interface portOn many occasions, slow hard drives are caused by the drive developing bad media: this is a common problem that can’t be repaired but if we get to the drive soon enough, it’s still possible to recover the data (see this link for more on bad media). In this case though, the fault was not due to bad media, but to a very weak head inside the hard drive. Here’s what the Data Clinic recovery engineer wrote about the job when I asked him:

The symptoms of the failure describe a weak head, but this was far from a straight forward recovery. Firstly we converted this is a SATA drive using a compatible PCB [these drives don’t have a SATA interface, instead they feature a USB interface hardwired onto the drive’s controller board], this then gave access to the ROM and the firmware. This drive was suffering from the well known ‘Slow Responding’ firmware failure which was the first thing we fixed. Upon testing the sectors we noticed that H1 [head 1 – one of the read/write heads inside the hard drive] was reading, but very poorly.

As the customer was after specific data, we cloned the $MFT area and recovered as much data off the 3 working heads before we conducted a head change.

I then set about reading the MicroJog information to find a compatible head donor, luckily we had one that wasn’t the best for the other heads but perfect for the failing H1. Heads 0,2,3 were fully cloned and then the head change was conducted, the remaining data areas where then cloned – we managed a perfect clone.

The data was then recovered to return media.

Problem with a WD10TMVW ?

Do you have a problem with a Western Digital WD10TMVW hard drive? Perhaps you are experiencing the same symptoms as the drive above or maybe the drive has failed in a different way? There are lots of ways a hard drive can develop problems – contact us for help and advice.

data recovery, microjog, western digital

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Data Clinic Reviews

Data Clinic Ltd - Manchester
Data Clinic Ltd - Manchester
4.5
Based on 141 reviews
See all reviewsWrite a review
Stewart Whitworth
Stewart Whitworth
12:42 28 Jun 22
Whilst Data Clinic were not able to retrieve the data from 1 of the 3 drives I sent to them - they were very easy to work with, accomodated my requests allowing for a very flexible recovery process (I dropped off the drives in person and provided an obscure drive type for the recovered data which they were perfectly happy with). When I asked why the last drive was unrecoverable, they explained with lots of detail, and of course I was not charged for said drive.I've learnt my lesson and hopefully won't ever need a recovery service again, but if I do I know who to go to!
Brian Greco
Brian Greco
13:38 09 Jun 22
3 years of my lifes' work and photos saved because of the amazing professionals at this company. My iPhone XS Max got stuck in a "boot loop" with a nearly full 512GB of storage. Most of the internet said there was no hope for this Error 14/1110: but Michelle, Elliot, and the team at Data Clinic said otherwise. Amazing friendly personable customer coordination from Michelle including arrangement of emergency service for which I flew into Manchester to the main lab. Elliot was patient, capable, and helped get the job DONE! I now have my phone not only backed up to an SSD for the data itself, but my phone is working as it was, and has updated software to the newest iOS. I cannot express my gratitude enough for the capable professionals who I was able to trust here at Data Clinic. I truly believe this is the best tech service I have ever experienced. Worth every penny and grateful for the invaluable benefit of my memories being restored. THANK YOU! Brian from USA based in Turkey

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