# Testdisk Read error at ______ Help!



## magikalfly (Aug 11, 2008)

Alright. Maybe someone can help me here. I've desperately searched around and tried all I can find.

A few months back, my external died on me. Confident that the drive itself wasn't bad, I hacked open my WD Mybook to liberate the drive. I bought another enclosure to try and see if it would work. No go. Windows would see the enclosure but not the drive.

No problem. Maybe the controller board. I spent an agonizing amount of time trying to locate an exact match for the drive. Since it was about a year old, it wasn't easy. 

BTW, don't buy refurbished hard drives. I bought one off ebay and not only was it NOT the right version, it was dead. Useless.

So I eventually located a used drive that still worked. Versions were all a match.

I removed the controller board from the old drive. It looked like it had gotten a little hot. The little sponge pad was burned.

Ok, so I transplant the healthy controller board. I start it up and Windows won't see it...

HOWEVER, data recovery utilities DO see the drive. Hope!!

I research and research and come across Testdisk.

I run and it finds no partitions. Well, clearly something is wrong since it list the drive as a 4TB drive. I don't know how that can happen but ok. I check the drive geometry in Testdisk and it's all out of whack. I match it up to specs and now Testdisk knows it's a 500GB drive.

Still no partitions show. I run an analysis and first sign something is wrong is that the counter keeps going past 100%. 150%...200%....uh oh.

But the biggest red flag, as it's running, every little byte or sector or whatever it's reading, .....

Read error at 34345345

And the number just keeps going up.

I tried photorec and it too had read errors.

So what it comes down to now is that my system can "see" the hard drive. However, it can't read anything off it. I'm running this off a USB enclosure as I don't have access to a desktop right now. But frankly, I don't know if that would be of any help seeing as how the drive can't freakin be read.

Also, that thing about the drive geometry has me worried and confused....

I'm sure I installed the controller board properly. I've swapped them back and forth from the healthy drive and the dead drive many times. I've tested the healthy drive every time and it works perfectly fine. 

I would appreciate if anybody has any insights on this. Is there any recourse left for me? 

Thanks.


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## wiseleo (Jul 9, 2008)

Well, now that you are done with that...Impressive effort by the way! let's try my way. It's linked in the signature. 

Did you know that you may need to resolder a chip on your controller board? What is the exact model/serial/firmware of the dead drive?

My method will skip the errors and ignore drive geometry.


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## magikalfly (Aug 11, 2008)

Thanks but I guess it wasn't impressive enough. 

I don't think I've read anything about needing to solder anything to the controller board?

The exact specs for the drives are

Western Digital WD5000AAKS - 00TMA0

Old dead drive - Malaysia 31 Dec 2006 s/n WMAPW1193222
DCM : HBRCNV2CA

Donor drive - Thailand 20 Mar 2008 M s/n WCAPW2009613
DCM : HANCHV2CH

I read at http://www.harddrive-repair.com/hard-drive-parts.html about a few things.

The firmwares for both drives are the same so the board SHOULD be compatible...

I read your post before but however, I don't know if that will apply to me. I was about to try it when I realized that if test disk won't read the drive, how can I even get anything off it?
But I guess I have nothing to lose and I'll give a try when I have some time later.

It's just strange to me how the drive won't be read by anything. A bit frustrating too since I know I'm so close to getting some data back. Thanks.


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## wiseleo (Jul 9, 2008)

Testdisk operates at a different level.

Ddrescue is designed to work with drives with bad sectors (automatically resets ATA bus in the event of bad sectors etc) whereas Testdisk is more of a higher level utility.

Donor drive 2 years into the future? You are quite brave. I'd be looking for a board from 2006.

I don't think we had NVRAM chips on WD controllers in 2006, but I'll verify.


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## magikalfly (Aug 11, 2008)

It's not really that I'm brave. That's all I could find. Trust me, I scoured. Stores, small shops, every place I could think of. I was even lucky to find a place that had the AAKS model. Almost all were newer revisions. ebay was the only place that came even close. Two years yea, but at least it was the same model and firmware......

I'll have to play hard drive musical chairs to get that ddrescue thing going.

Btw, does it support usb enclosures? That's all I have access to at the moment.


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## wiseleo (Jul 9, 2008)

Well, you simply didn't call the right places.

No surprise as they don't advertise very well. I usually find the donors on eBay pretty easily. You just need to know how to search. 

It sounds like the new board is spinning up the drive, but it's not the right one.

Cue technologies
http://www.cuetech.com/
800-746-4283

TCB technologies
http://www.tcbtek.net/
866-307-2787

Component sourcing group
http://www.tekby.com/
877-274-7620


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## magikalfly (Aug 11, 2008)

Thanks!! Any suggestions on what I should ask them for more specifically? Anything to look out for? Serial numbers? Made in xxxxxx? Manufacture date? DCM?

I mean, this drive was manufactured about 2 years ago and sourcing a likely donor won't be easy I think. 

I thought all that needed to match was the model and firmware version.

Thanks for all this btw. If anything, you're keeping my hope alive.


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## wiseleo (Jul 9, 2008)

Easier than you think.

Those companies are in business specifically to help people like me. Just tell them the model number, date of manufacture etc.

When I look on eBay, I start by looking for the exact model string. Some eBayers are smart enough to post that information. Otherwise, I start looking at all drives of that capacity and ask lots of seller questions. I actually wrote an eBay guide how to sell a hard drive to someone like me. Maybe some sellers will actually read it. ;-)


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