To all Dolphin DFL users:
Recently we have received many WD SMR hdd data recovery cases by remote support system from Dolphin users worldwide and Dolphin engineers have found many issues and wrong operations from users’ side:
01: Some users get one patient WD SMR HDD and go to extract lost data directly without doing any firmware backup or further diagnosis;
02: Some users backup firmware modules directly without disable 411, this adds to the risk of damaging original module 190;
03: Some users use the same firmware repair concept for old WD drives to repair WD SMR drives without firmware backup;
04: Some users receive failed WD SMR HDD cases from other data recovery companies without any original firmware backup. The user needs to remind the hdd owner to ask for the first copy of firmware modules, specially the original module 190, otherwise, it can be not possible to recover the lost data;
05: Some users extract the files directly instead of imaging the patient unstable HDD. This adds to the risk of further damage to heads or surfaces.
Correct Steps to Recover Lost Data from WD SMR HDDs:
01: Unlock firmware area by writing unlock rom to original pcb or change one sata firmware unlock pcb;
02: Disable 411 and backup 190 and T2data;
03: Backup other important firmware modules;
04: Test firmware modules and find which ones are corrupted;
05: Repair damaged firmware modules;
06: Repair WD SMR HDD slow issue, please note not the common slow fix, use the special WD SMR hdd slow repair solutions;
07: Load T2data to RAM if necessary after entering DFL-DDP data recovery software;
08: Set up head map for patient HDD and image good heads first;
09: Image patient HDD.
Top recommended WD SMR 8x00xx HDD USB to SATA adapters for best success rate.
Any question is welcome to sales[at]dolphindatalab.com and this is also the teams ID for live support.
This is one successful data recovery case study of Toshiba Hitachi HDD DT01ACA100 with capacity 0 failure.
Patient HDD ID:
Family-7210DLE6
Model ID: DT01ACA100
Failure Symptoms
Capacity is 0 and data area is not accessible
Required hdd repair tools and data recovery tools to recover the lost data from DT01ACA100 patient HDD:
DFL Hitachi HDD Firmware Repair Tool
DFL DDP data recovery tool
HDD Repair and Data Recovery Steps
01: Connect the patient DT01ACA100 hdd to DFL Hitachi hdd repair hardware and backup the firmware modules, rom and nvram;
02: Go to FW Operations>Initialize HDD>Initialize Microcode, users just select the fw backup path and then click ok to run the auto repair;
03: Power off and on the patient HDD;
04: Open DFL DDP data recovery software and the user found the lost partition and folders.
Any question is welcome to sales[at]dolphindatalab.com.
All-in-one ROM Chip Adapter Smart was available for international data recovery engineers to read and write ROM chips and it works with the Chip-on HDD Flash Programmer Smart.
This All-in-one ROM Chip Adapter Smart supports both standard ROM chip sizes and mini ROM chip sizes and users just need to solder the rom chip off the original PCB and then solder it onto this adapter and then users can read the rom by the Chip-on HDD Flash Programmer Smart software. Users need to put the rom chip one by one to read the data, cannot put two or more chips at the same time onto this adapter to read.
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Please note: This all-in-one rom chip adapter requires good soldering skills. It’s mainly used for the latest mini rom chips whose sizes are even smaller than the known 4mm*3mm or 3mm*2mm which has better choices to read and write rom by HDD Mini ROM Chip Reader Pro. 3*2 and HDD Mini ROM Chip Reader Pro. 4*3
CMT-128L3M Raid SSD Data Recovery Tool is available for data recovery engineers worldwide by DHL express, EMS, Fedex, etc.
ACER S5 S7 Raid SSD Data Recovery Adapter Pro. is able to convert the mSATA to SATA interface and users can connect then the SSD to the common SATA hdd data recovery equipment to image the SSD.
Please note: there’re data chips on both the front side and back side of this raid 0 SSD, so users need to image front side first and then image back side. After creating the two image files of both sides, users need to rebuild raid 0 to see the files and video demo is available for users.
This is one successful data recovery case study for one Dolphin user in India. This was one busy undetected ST4000LM024 patient HDD and the user couldn’t access the data area.
To recover the lost data from this patient ST4000LM024 HDD, users need to have the following data recovery tools:
01: DFL Seagate firmware repair tool;
02: DFL DDP data recovery tool
Steps to repair the ST4000LM024 firmware failure and recover the lost data:
01: ST4000LM024 firmware unlock;
02: Backup important SYS files;
03: Fix translator issue. Pls note: this patient hdd got data encryption issue after the firmware failure was fixed and therefore, users need to decrypt the data;
04: Data decryption by DFL Seagate hdd firmware repair tool;
05: Extract lost folders and files by DFL DDP data recovery tool.
Any question is welcome to sales[@]dolphindatalab.com(Microsoft teams ID).
Patient HDD ID:
WD160EDGZ WD161KFGX WD161KRYZ
WUH721816ALE6L4 WUH721816ALE604
WUH721816AL5200
Patient HDD Failure Symptoms:
UNC error reported when trying to access the data area (running logical scan)
There’re many WD Hitachi helium hard drives of 8T,10T,12T,14T,16T,etc. Users can connect these patient drives to desktop computer SATA ports and test the hdds by one software to see if they report UNC error. Users can also connect these helium patient drives to the existing hdd firmware repair hardware and see if they report UNC error.
Related article: Recover Lost Data from WD Hitachi Helium Hard Drives with UNC Common Firmware Failure
