Samsung HD103SJ clicking - TTL returns nothing or just few characters
- Thread starter fijaaha
- Start date
No. The odds are the corruption is because of the TTL not being set to the correct baud rate or an issue with the TTL. A clicking Samsung is almost always a sign of heads and/or media damage. If you value your data, you should keep the drive powered off and seek professional data recovery assistance.
if you're not going to send your HD off to a DR company/specialist, then do this: if affordable, if possible, usb or dvd boot Macrium Reflect or anything similar, do a one-pass sector by sector clone or full image of the whole HD onto any reliable external HD. Keep the clone spare in a safe place, it might be needed later on.
Roland, I appreciate that you are trying to give advice, but you need to understand the problem before you can offer a solution. The drive spins, clicks and then spins down. This means that it is impossible to clone. The heads are unable to read the service tracks, either because the heads are damaged or the service tracks are damaged. In both cases, clean room data recovery is the only option.
I'm going to need new glasses!Thank you for your advice. I contacted local DR and they claimed that it could be the heads but also the PCB swap could work since the firmware can be somehow "locked". They also stated that the 500GB model has had a lot of problems but this HD103SJ is less proned to head problems or at least has a lot less problems.
Finally they said that they could easily confirm it if I just drop by their office.
I stand by my diagnosis of it being heads, though I do admit that there is a less than 10% chance it could be PCB. Assuming that your local DR is an actual reputable data recovery lab, it is worth getting it assessed by them.
If it is a PCB issue, the cost should be under $300 US and shouldn't take more than a couple days to complete the full recovery.
Let us know how it goes.
Could you explain that how it could be determined to be a PCB problem?
Yes, they are reputable and seemed to have a really good understanding while they described different problems etc.
I also got a quote from them for the head replacement (assuming that I have a donor drive).
It was quite affordable but still it is quite much money...
In a case like yours, our approach here would be to first inspect the condition of your read/write heads in our clean room before powering your drive on. If everything looks okay, we would then power the drive on to read the terminal output, if possible. Then we would attempt to read the ROM off your PCB (or physically remove the ROM chip) and then program (or solder the patient ROM chip) the donor PCB. If the drive works with the donor PCB, we are good to go.
But, in all reality, based on what you are describing, I don't think we would even bother wasting our time with the PCB, knowing that is unlikely the cause of your issues.
It seems that you are in good hands then. Again, let us know how you make out.
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