Hot Swap Guides

Hot Swap is one traditional and universal method which can be often used for data
recovery from different hard drives.
Hot swap is used when you are trying to fix the damaged SA modules but if the drive
cannot write to the System Area to fix corrupted modules.
Firmware corruption on modern hard drives usually occurs when one or more
modules are damaged in the System Area on the disk platters. Fixing this type of
problem requires specialized utilities to test and repair corrupted modules. Usually,
the repair can be done using professional hdd repair tools, and it doesn't require any
extra steps to perform.
Sometimes, however, some modules cant be fixed. This could be due to the
following reasons:
1, There is media damage in the System Area, so heads cannot write in that area;
2, There is some damage to system heads write elements, so heads cannot write at
all;
3, Modules containing unique write parameters for the heads (adaptives) are
corrupted, so the drive cannot write;
4, The hard drive doesn't give access to System Area if some critical modules are
corrupted;
5, If some modules cant be fixed, the solution is to use the Hot Swap method to
access the drive System Area and try to repair the modules.
A Hot Swap procedure generally follows these steps:
1, Use a matching donor drive, enter the specialized utility, and make sure that the
drive is in working condition;
2, Put the donor drive into Standby mode using a special command from within the
utility. This command makes the drive spin down the motor without cutting power to
the drive.
3, Carefully hot-swap the board by disconnecting it from the good donor drive and
connecting it to the bad drive. Even though the drive is not spinning, the board is still
alive.
4, Wake up the drive by executing Recalibrate or another ATA command; if the donor
drive was compatible enough, the bad patient drive should spin up and become
ready;

5, Test the System Area and repair corrupted modules as needed.

So, the idea is essentially to initialize a donor PCB with firmware from the donor
drive, then hot-swap the board to the faulty hard drive and repair corrupted
modules.
This procedure can usually be applied for cases c) and d). Unfortunately, when there
is a hardware problem with heads (b) or media (a), hot swapping won't allow you to
repair corrupted modules. For these complex cases, there is a Smart Hot Swap
method to use and this method is explained below:
The Smart Hot Swap procedure is very important in modern hard drive recoveries. In
some situations it is the only way to get access to user data, and without mastering
this method, a certain percentage of cases will remain unrecoverable.
A basic Hot Swap often allows technicians to access the hard drive system area and
repair corrupted modules. However, sometimes the basic method isnt enough, as in
these cases:
1, There is media damage in the System Area and the heads cannot write in that area,
so modules cannot be repaired;
2, There is some damage to the system heads write elements, so the heads cannot
write at all.
3, One of the heads is bad, the hard drive is clicking, and you want to at least image
sectors that belong to the good heads before swapping heads from the donor.
In those cases, a basic Hot Swap won't allow you to repair the drive and have it start
up on its own. Instead, you can use a Hot Swap to jumpstart the drive and try to
image the user data rather than repairing the firmware.

The limitations of a basic Hot Swap for imaging

Obviously, every hard drive is different, and if you just try to read data on the
damaged patient drive after a basic Hot Swap without preparing the donor drive first,
various things could happen:
1, The drive may start clicking as soon as you start accessing the data.
2, Every single read attempt may return an error or just time out.
3, Sectors may seem to read fine but afterwards you may encounter shifts in data,
such as missing or redundant sectors, that may result in an inability to recover the
file system.
4, The drive could read fine up to some point and then error out on every sector
after a certain LBA (Logical Block Addressing) number.
All of these problems are caused by the simple fact that the firmware modules on

the donor and patient drives are not compatible. In cases a) and b), most likely the
adaptives are not close enough, and in cases c) and d) the translator tables are
different, so after being initialized with the donor translator, the drive seeks for the
data in the wrong place on the patient drive.
The Smart Hot Swap method gets around these limitations.
How to do a Smart Hot Swap and get more data
For a Smart Hot Swap, you prepare a donor drive that is identical to the bad drive
firmware-wise and then use that donor for a Hot Swap to read the data from the bad
drive without fixing it.

Procedure for a Smart Hot Swap

Read all System Area (SA) tracks from the patient drive. If you can't read all of the
System Area tracks for some reason, you may need to employ the Hot Swap method.
Prepare your Smart Hot Swap donor drive by writing all of the patient SA tracks. This
step makes your donor System Area fully identical to the one on your patient drive so
that all defect lists, adaptives, and other modules are in sync with the patient drive.
Once the Smart Hot Swap donor is ready, you can put the patient PCB on your donor,
start it up, make sure it IDs with the patient S/N, perform a Hot Swap and start
imaging the data.
The procedure above is simplified, and in some cases you may need to modify it or
add some extra steps. For example, copying firmware by SA tracks works well on
Western Digital and Samsung, while on Maxtor and Seagate it does not, and you will
need to transfer only specific translator/adaptive firmware modules from patient to
donor. On some newer Western Digital hard drives, some unique adaptives are
stored on the PCB board in ROM, so you may need to tweak these parameters in the
patient ROM to make the board start on the donor drive, for example.
Another thing to keep in mind is choosing the right donor for a Smart Hot Swap.
These rules vary from vendor to vendor but the general rule the closer, the better
usually applies. Quite often, however, you may need to consider some other internal
parameters that you cant find on the drives label, such as head map configuration,
adaptives compatibility, and matching firmware revision.

WD HDD Hot Swap

However, it requires differently to run successful hot swap, now lets talking about

WD HDD hot swap. For a donor HDD to do hot swap, it requires the same firmware
version and same head map contents. For complete data recovery, an identical
translator is required too.
Firmware version and head map can be easily fulfilled by selection of an appropriate
donor drive. Here they are: the donor drive must be a similar model of the same
family (the MDL line on HDA case must match), it must use a compatible firmware
version and the same head map (it can be verified by reading ROM in Kernel mode).
The PCB of the target drive must function normally on the donor HDA.
For an identical translator, it cannot be fulfilled by plain selection as there are no two
drives with the same P-List tables and, consequently, with identically translators.
Therefore, if you need to recover data using HOT-SWAP, you should perform two
steps:
Step 1, based on the firmware version and head map, select a donor HDD and
perform the first HOT-SWAP during which you should test the firmware modules. In
particular, you must verify the integrity of the translator modules or P-List table.
Then these translator modules must be copied to the donor drive (remember to
preserve a backup copy of the original donor modules). If the translator modules are
corrupted, overwrite the P-List module and Regenerate translator using P-List.
Step 2, Use the donor thus prepared to perform the second HOT-SWAP after which
you can attempt recovery of user data with the help of data recovery tools.