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dataminer · Active contributor Joined: 18 May 2010 Posts: 6

I have a Western Digital Caviar Green (WD10EADS) 1.0TB that worked flawlessly.... until it dropped it's pants and took a &$^% of epic proportion. One day I booted to discover the drive went from it's normal NTFS partitioned size, down to a 30gb unpartitioned drive. I ran some recovery software (ERP, MHDD, RStudio), all it can seem to find is that 30gb on the drive.

I figure it's the logic board? I have another drive, same model, I swapped the logic boards out, but the swapped one prevented the drive from showing up at all.

The sticker on the logic board says:
2081-701590 XC 7K10 0R7P K 0003340 9343

The white 'paint stamp' in the corner of the drive says:
94V-0
TS-M-8V01C SG
TOPSEARCH
E96016
16733

The text stamped into the PCB says:
2060-701590-000
REV A

Am I out of luck or is there hope for my drive? Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Sincerely,
DM

harddrivespecialist · Posted: Tue May 25, 2010 1:49 pm Post subject:

Unfortunately, with such symptoms new board won't help.
You have either SA corruption or media damage on your drive.

Shop around for a pro to recover data from your drive or just get a new drive and move on with your life.
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dataminer · Active contributor Joined: 18 May 2010 Posts: 6

HDAT2 worked flawlessly. Boot that puppy up, make sure you disconnect the other drives so you don't bonk one accidentally. Go into it, there's a section about Host Protected Area. It'll show you the real size of the drive before it got zapped down to... mine got zapped to 30gb from 1tb. Reboot into windows, run some standard recovery software and there's all your data. I'm recovering at the moment and then I'm going to test the drive with some reboots and such, I'll keep you posted.

I must confess I downloaded it via a torrent, but since it worked, I will be buying this software it worked beautifully I recommend you do the same. I have a Gigabyte mainboard and from what Ive read in other posts, that's what shrinks the drive.

So if you got a drive and it magically shrinks by a massive amount, it's not the drive, or the logic board, give HDAT2 a shot and you'll be pleased with the results. WOO!

fzabkar · Deadharddrive regular +3 Joined: 02 Apr 2010 Posts: 210

HDAT2 is freeware:
http://www.hdat2.com/description.html

BTW, I think you meant that your drive shrank to 32MB, not GB.

Furthermore, you shouldn't have needed any data recovery software, unless you wrote to the drive while it was in the truncated state.

dataminer · Active contributor Joined: 18 May 2010 Posts: 6

Well... all the by-the-ways and the furthermores aside... it's working.

I wrote nothing to the drive but the partition data was gone, could have been the result of the other recovery packages I was using, but it worked beautifully after HDAT2. I think that's the important thing here.

You almost sound... mad... because I got this working. Are you the guy who was haggling with me over drive recovery and was going to give me the 'great deal' of $890 to recover it? Sorry I fixed it myself amigo.

So if you experience any truncation, be it 32gb like me, or 32mb like some people think. Run HDAT2, you might need a recovery package, but give that a shot before you think about logic boards or shipping it off for recovery.

I won't be back to this site, but if you ever need a hand though, send me a message.

Catastrophic failure averted, it is a beautiful day.

-DM

fzabkar · Deadharddrive regular +3 Joined: 02 Apr 2010 Posts: 210

I'm not a DR guy. You've mistaken me for someone else. I suggest that you revisit the other thread that you started on the same subject. You'll find that I'm the guy that introduced you, and many others, to the HDAT2 solution. Believe me, I have no interest in taking your money. In fact that's why the DR pros hate me.

To be fair, the DR pros don't understand the problem. They only see the drives that land in their workshop -- they don't see the configuration that was responsible for the problem. That said, I have explained the problem many times in other forums such as HDD Guru, yet the "gurus" still peddle their "corrupted firmware" nonsense. It seems that some will go to any lengths to part you from your money.

In fact in this forum there are several members whose only reason for participation appears to be to sell you a used PCB, no matter what the problem. I, OTOH, see a forum as a helpdesk, not a marketplace.

The reason I suggested that you should not write to the drive is that this is the accepted practice when troubleshooting damaged file systems.

See this recent thread where a partition table needed to be rebuilt, by hand, after Microsoft's seemingly innocuous FIXMBR command trashed it, and data recovery software was unable to recover it:

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/ATA-and-Serial-ATA-drives/1-5TB-SATA-suddenly-showing-at-500GB-and-asking-to-be-formated/m-p/52642

Here is an account of my own disastrous mistake with FIXBOOT:

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion/browse_thread/thread/b5a85f1e2122af44/1a099425734f8a36#1a099425734f8a36

Anyway, congratulations on your fix, even if you didn't thank me for it.

BTW, you don't need to steal free stuff.

dataminer · Active contributor Joined: 18 May 2010 Posts: 6

If you wrote HDAT, you'll find you have a donation coming, and a thank you as well. Because you fn rock!

If you didn't, and yet you feel entitled because you made mention of it in another thread (and not even in mine). Then um... thanks?

fzabkar · Deadharddrive regular +3 Joined: 02 Apr 2010 Posts: 210

[quote="dataminer"]If you wrote HDAT, you'll find you have a donation coming, and a thank you as well. Because you fn rock!

If you didn't, and yet you feel entitled because you made mention of it in another thread (and not even in mine). Then um... thanks?[/quote]

Aren't you the same "dataminer" who asked me a question in this thread:
http://www.deadharddrive.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=9605#9605

corbingravely · Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2018 5:19 pm Post subject:

I am gonna suggest to move on. Data recovery is not gonna work for this. One of my friends had the same issue and he went to get the help of a data recovery expert. But to no use. So i would say you better go purchase something new. I am not sure if there is any other good data recovery method now. But back then it was completely a waste of time.

-------------------------------
Corbin Gravely
Best Kindergarten in Muscat
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JaredDM · Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2018 2:09 pm Post subject:

You do realize this thread was started years ago right? This forum is now pretty much dead.

If you want to discuss data recovery stuff now, I'd suggest you visit one of these forums:

https://www.data-medics.com/forum
http://forums.hddguru.com
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