Western Digital Hard Drive Data Recovery

Firmware Problems

These are probably the most common drives and are generally quiet and reliable, however we have seen a small percentage of these drives failing due to system area corruption that we have managed to recreate in our labs. We believe that this is not a manufacturing problem. We have developed in-house software tools and techniques to recover data from all Western Digital drives with this and other system area, electronic and mechanical problems. Our overall data recovery rate for Western Digital drives is better than 85%

We can carry out data recovery from all models of Western Digital hard drives including

• Western Digital Desktop (ATA drive, SATA drives)
• Western Digital Server (SCSI drives)
• Western Digital Laptop hard drives
• Western Digital External drives

The symptoms are that the drive is recognised ok by the computer, but nothing can be read.

During our research we found that there were usually between 1 to 6 firmware modules affected. These represent the SMART logs, and the translator mechanism used by the drive to track bad sectors. When problems arise in these areas, the drive will partly initialise, but may up to 60 seconds before the drive shows in BIOS. Because the translator is not loaded correctly, the drive will not finish initialising and nothing can be read or written to the drive.

Electronics problems on Western Digital hard disks

As with most modern hard disks, swapping a controller card is not recommended. Drives containing SERIAL-ROM have unique code for the drive's functioning hard coded either into the ROM or embedded in the processor. Data recovery from these drives require these components to be replaced with their original contents.

Symptoms of electronic failure are;

• Drive is completely dead
• Drive spins but does not come ready (could also indicate a firmware problem)
• Drive clicks during power up (could also indicate a head crash)