Samsung Head Swap Tips-Donor Search

So when you confirm it is physical head damage which requires you to perform the head swap to extract the lost data, the next step is to find a donor head or donor hard drive. What's a donor hard drive for Samsung head swap?

From the old families before Victor, Puma, Verna & etc. ( Max capacity 120Gb, Max Head number 4 ) donor drive for Heads stack has to be chosen by the 4-th symbol on the side sticker which consist from 5 symbols. There are 3 versions of this sticker: xxxAx, xxxRx, xxxSx. 4-th symbol should match on patient and on donor drive, this symbol is responsible for this drive Heads stack manufacturer.

From the families like Palo, Magma, P80M, Delphi and other ( Max capacity 160Gb, Max Head number 4 ) to Poseidon family ( Max capacity 250Gb, Max Head number 4 ), the donor drive could be recognized by other symbols on the top sticker after P/V. There are 2 versions of such sticker: P\V: xS, P\V: xA. As you see the second symbol should be matched. Nowadays this sticker as P/V: xA does not exists on manufactured drives.

There are no symbols/codes responsible for Heads on the HDD stickers for Trident( T133(S)), T166(S), M60(S), M80(S) ) families . But the hard drive manufacturer started to use only "S ( SAE )" heads. So , for this families, the heads stack donor has to belong same family and its heads map should be the same as on patient.

Learn more Samsung data recovery tips here shared by other authors in Data Recovery Salon.