For many WD SMR patient drives, the weak heads or bad sectors data recovery cases are very common and selective head image is very necessary and used a lot.
To run selective head image for WD SMR drives, users can follow the steps below:
01: Unlock the SA by writing unlock rom or swap the original PCB with firmware unlock PCB;
02: Disable 411 in kernel mode and restart firmware;
03: Backup T2Data and module 190;
04: Set up disk image task, select Head Map and select 190 or T2 data to set up head map;
05: After head map is set up, users can select good heads to image first and then weak heads.
To recover lost data from Western Digital SMR hard drives, one of the most important steps is to backup the module 190 successfully.
For WD SMR drives’ data recovery cases, it is very common the module 190 backup may fail due to its large size, bad sectors or weak heads, etc. At this situation, users can follow the instructions below to increase the success rate of module 190 backup. Besides, users need to be very careful of the right steps to backup module 190.
WD SMR drives have MCU lock, users need to remove the MCU lock by the following methods:
01: Remove MCU lock by writing unlock ROM;
02: Remove MCU lock by firmware unlock PCB.
WD SMR Drives Module 190 Backup Steps:
01: Remove MCU lock;
02: Enter DFL-WD firmware repair software and disable 411;
03: Re-enter the WD software and backup the module 190 and other important firmware modules; When users are reading the module 190, users have the following modes to read the module 190 successfully:
Mode 1: Read 190 of copy 0 by ABA fully;
Mode 2: Read 190 of copy 1 by ABA fully;
Mode 3: Read 190 valid data only of copy 0 by ABA fully;
Mode 4: Read 190 valid data only of copy 1 by ABA fully;
Mode 5: Read 190 fully by ID;
Mode 6: Read 190 valid data only by ID.
Users can select different modes to read the module 190 successfully according to the hard drive diagnosis. If users have deleted or formatted data data to recover, it’s better to backup the 190 fully. But if there’re read errors during reading 190, users can try valid data only backup.
To recover lost data from WD SMR formatted HDD, the PC users need to stop the power immediately and stop working on it any further, specially stop writing any new data on the formatted hdd. As for data recovery engineers, they need to bypass the firmware read(disable 411) firstly, backup the important firmware modules, specially the module 190.
HDD Firmware Repair Tools and Data Recovery Tools Required To recover lost data from formatted WD SMR HDDs:
DFL-WD HDD Firmware Repair Tool
DFL-DDP Data Recovery Equipment
Steps to recover lost data from WD SMR Formatted HDD:
01: MCU unlock by writing unlock ROM with HDD ROM chip pin reader or swap with firmware unlock PCB;
02: Enter secured firmware operations mode to avoid the dynamic translator corruption;
03: Backup the dynamic translator module 190 and repair 190 automatically to get a good copy of T2Data;
04: Accelerate the firmware loading process;
05: Test firmware modules and repair found corrupted modules;
06: Load T2Data to RAM(Auto mode) to access the data area fully.
The following are some example videos or related videos to recover lost data from WD SMR formatted HDDs:
WD SMR HDD Palmer 800066 800069 Format Data Recovery
WD SMR HDD 1.5T Data Recovered From 0.03GB Patient HDD by Module 190 Auto Repair
The following are the DFL WD HDD Firmware Repair Highlight Functions and Solutions for a higher success rate of Western Digital hdd data recovery cases.
01: Support unlock firmware area for many new WD SMR HDDs;
02: Easy firmware module test and repair;
03: Shift modules to new empty tracks, change module location to fix SA bad sector issue;
04: Very easy common slow fix repair for new and old wd drives;
05: Easy head map editing in RAM;
06: Easy smartware unlock;
07: Repair weak heads by adjusting heads’ working temperature;
08: Easy head adaptive parameters swap to get head swap more successful;
09: Easy rom regeneration for old wd drives before smr drives;
10: Easy firmware failure bypassing to repair busy undetected drives;
Read full list of highlight feature by the following video demo:
The following are the DFL Seagate HDD Firmware Repair Highlight Functions and Solutions for a higher success rate of Seagate hdd data recovery cases.
01: Easy switch from quick firmware repair solutions(DFL-DDP data recovery equipment) and professional firmware repair solutions(DFL-Seagate firmware repair software);
02: Support unlock rom generation for many new seagate hdd families and models and unlock the firmware area successfully;
03: Read full list of highlight feature by the following video demo:
ST2000lm009 2023 unlock rom generation success;
WD20SDRW 2022 unlock rom generation success;
