WD3200BEKT-60V5T1 Undetection Capacity 0 Data Recovery Case Study

This is one very interesting western digital hdd data recovery case, the patient hard drive was not detected and capacity was 0, but finally all data was perfectly recovered by DFL WD firmware repair tool and DFL DDP data recovery tool.

Patient HDD ID: WD3200BEKT-60V5T1
Family: Saturn
2 platters / 4 heads

Failure symptoms:
Undetected; Capacity 0
All firmware modules were listed, available, read/write was normal, no head damage, data area blocked.

Tried firmware repair solutions:
Slow repair; firmware module testing and all firmware modules were found ok.
Manually checked the translator and other key firmware modules and all were ok.

Final firmware repair solution:
Back up the key firmware modules and rom;
Format SA;
Download one set of donor firmware with very close microcode, only the last digit was different.
Write donor ROM;
Load module dir to get module list;
Load module dir to ram;
Load loaders(For some old ROYL drives, this is not needed)
Write all donor firmware modules, firmware restart and wait until the drive got ready and detected;
Write original key firmware modules;
Firmware restart and access to the data area normally.

Please note: for new WD drives after PCB 198x, to format sa is very risky and users can use other methods to fix WD firmware failed cases. Dolphin team will write more case studies for Dolphin users to learn.

Any question is welcome to sales@dolphindatalab.com or add Dolphin Skype ID: dolphin.data.lab