I'm just starting to venture into advanced HDD repair and need to know what has to be done to this drive.

I have a Hitachi 2TB SATA Desktop drive model# HUA722020ALA330 but the test/repair software I use sees it as a 1TB HUA722010ZLA.

Was the disc labeled wrong at the factory or did something happen to the firmware ???

Rookie followup question ... how do I flash proper firmware onto it so it becomes the 2TB drive as labeled ??

thnx,
Mike

it can be a simple thing like HPA
it can be FW problems/modifications
it can be that someone disabled zones/heads

in short:
it needs proper examination

This is absurd, for what purpose?? the same utility as a refrigerator at the North Pole ( or South)......

What is the serial number on your tool? Does it match the label? Most likely your tool is misdetecting the drive model.

Hitachi/toshiba store most of the firmware on the PCB, so if the serial number does not match, the pcb is not the original one.

just wow ... colanco , this is how you welcome someone new to the forum ??

"Most likely your tool is misdetecting the drive model." <-- unfortunately, no ... the motherboard sees it as a 1TB drive so the software does too.

"f the serial number does not match, the pcb is not the original one." <-- only identification on the drive card is a small white sticker.
None of the numbers on the sticker match anything on the drive body or label.

Am I correct in saying, according to you, the card has been changed and does not match up with the drive ??

By the way, when I say basic HDD repair I mean using software to repair corrupt sectors ... something most techs don't want to be bothered with. Your response was full of attitude an not necessary.

Please post good pics of the labels of the disk and of the pcb.

@EGPCwAx I'm sorry if my comment seemed inappropriate to you, I honestly don't think so, but I can assume that.
I assumed that if you are at an advanced level you had some kind of dedicated hardware in addition to the software (sorry if the comment seems inappropriate)
I don't mean the pcb label, I mean if your software tells you the serial number of the drive and if it matches the disk label number

Yeah, that's the idea.for a reason will be

See viewtopic.php?f=1&t=34259

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If the drive is functional, the PCB should be the original one it seems that this affects many more drives.......

Perhaps all of these units come from equipment that for some reason needed to limit the capacity of the drives (HPA)?

I can't help you. I don't know what the problem is.

OK rogfanther ... posted 4 pics for you.

software reads correct serial number so it looks like card is the original.

also ... did some quick searching on ebay for similar drive ... all card numbers are correct for a 2TB drive.

one other thing ... when I attempted to do a zero fill, instead of getting something in the neighborhood of 50MB/s all I got was 6MB/s so this drive definitely has issues.

fzabkar thanks for the link. good to know i'm not the only one thats had this problem. unfortunately, there is no way to resolve this issue according to that thread.

A little more on what my intentions are...
For quite a few years now I've been doing what I think are the basics to clean up used drives ... both for customers drives and stuff I re-sell on ebay ... run software that finds and repairs corrupt sectors and then do a zero fill and reformat.
When I get a pile of drives that just click or I hear the drive squeak & reset, I'd like to do something to correct them instead of just setting them aside and selling them as defective. I was hoping to use this Hitachi drive as a launch point for my journey into deeper drive repair techniques but, it looks like the drive isn't going to cooperate.

....

Nope.

Toshiba stores most of firmware (CPs) on PCB but HITACHI/HGST/IBM ... NO ...

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- PCB is original or compatible. On UBM based drives M24 and ARM if NVRam doesn't match SA code drive will not even ID. Same if you have non compatible PCB. Capacity limitation is done at SA level (module) and NOT PCB.

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2510

Where did you get that drive from ? Did you buy it as re-certed drive ? Maybe someone disabled on head on the drive or cut the capacity of it ?

I do buy damaged drives on eBay as well and i fix them and i re-sell them but i never cut capacity and if drive is too damaged i sell PCB only ....

Maybe the drive is "locked" for some sort of unit or it was cutted for any reasone, etc ...

Easy to do with proper firmware tools like PC-3000.

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Spildit ... I got a batch of drives on ebay ... this is one of them

Two other drives are re-sized but go the other way.
One is a Toshiba 500GB laptop, the other is a Toshiba 750GB laptop ... they both report as 2TB drives !!!

Just weird.

OHHHH !!!

The Chinese seller dir remove some capacity from the 2 TB drives and did add that capacity to you Hitachi one ! Mistery solved !!!!



Fake drives ... Someone that does have firmware tools did "refurb" drives or just patch them for whatever reason and re-sold them ....

Complain to the guy who sold you the drives ? Get your money back ?

Re-sell the drives as damaged/fake to someone who can re-use them ?

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Agreed.

One or two drives could come from someone who tried ( and failed ) to adapt the drive to working on a xbox.

A bunch of drives, bought from the same place, smells more of someone with a firmware tool trying to hide defects on used drives but not knowing what they were doing.

Unless that the drives were sold as defective, etc and the OP is trying to repair them ... Maybe the one selling the drives did play already with them and sold them for parts only ....

If not .... go ask for a refund !

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That would depend also if the drives were sold as 1TB drives. If yes, and if they format ok to 1TB, then not many reason to complain.

All depends on what was written on the listing.

Well ... The bigger problem that i see is not with the 2TB drives "downgraded" to 1TB .... I think the bigger "problem" is with the ones that have less capacity and are "upgraded" to a bigger capacity .... Thos most likely are just "fake" and if you reach the true capacity of the drive you are in for pain ...

I don't see any "valid" reason for a drive to report bigger capacity .... If they were downsized there is a reason for that ... unless the label states a bigger capacity ...

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I don't see any problem with a drive that says it have 1TB but that drive is locked to some DVR device and it does report 500 GB. It's safe to edit firmware to return the 1TB size. Same for drives locked to XBox. Also if one drive have 2 TB it's safe to disable one head and use 1TB.

If the drive on the label says 500 GB but if it reports 1 TB ... I WOULDN'T TRUST IT NEVER !!!! Because if the label have a small capacity then at factory they decided to downsize the drive and it was not to lock the drive to a device.

Either someone re-enabled head(s) for damaged surface (that didn't pass factory test) or someone just wrote more capacity - LBAs on the module of the firmware containing size and when you reach the true size limit of the drive only GOD knows what is going to happen but believe me your data will be gone as you can't write to non-existing sectors just because the drive does ID with a bigger size that it can store .... If you store LBAs past the true capacity that data will be gone for sure if not the entire drive with the data already there ...

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Wait, doesn´t the drive store the data "in the clould" then ?

I agree with you, none of those drives can be trusted before a good examination and testing. As for the rest of the situation, a lot depends on how was the lot listed.

It has been my experience that people read a listing and understand what they want from it, thinking " I´m da man, I´m gonna score big on this one because this seller doesn´t know what he is selling". Then, when they receive something that is damaged, sold as damaged, was written in the listing as damaged, had a big label on the photos saying damaged, they feel entitled to complain "it doesn´t work".

I saw someone complaining that a laptop they bought from a listing as "non-working/for parts/doesn´t turn on " had "hidden defects not informed on the listing" ..kinda makes one wonder why do we let some people drive and use the internet...

See http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2510

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