wrong label or wrong firmware ??

[EGPCwAx]

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

[jermy]

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

[colanco]

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

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.

[EGPCwAx]

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.

[rogfanther]

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

[colanco]

@EGPCwAx I'm sorry if my comment seemed inappropriate to you, I honestly don't think so, but I can assume that.

unfortunately, no ... the motherboard sees it as a 1TB drive so the software does too.

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)

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

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

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

Yeah, that's the idea.

... something most techs don't want to be bothered with.

for a reason will be

[fzabkar]

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

[colanco]

If the drive is functional, the PCB should be the original one

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

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.

[EGPCwAx]

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.

Attachments

[EGPCwAx]

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.

[rogfanther]

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.

[rogfanther]

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.

[rogfanther]

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...

[fzabkar]

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

[EGPCwAx]

the 2 laptop drives were from a different batch that tne hitachi desktop so I don't think there was any tampering or manipulation of firmware going on.

they were batches of used drives sold for parts etc.

I think this is a case of HDD manufacturers trying to do what the chip manufacturers do.

When AMD released their Athlon and Phenom 3 core CPUs they were actually 4 core chips with 1 core deactivated.
Motherboard manufacturers figured out how to activate the core so they added the feature to the BIOS of the mobo.

Same for these hard drives. Regardless of what the label says the size is (500GB or 1 TB) it has 2 platters. You can write into the firmware to read just 1 platter making it a 500GB drive. If something happens to that hard drive (maybe a power surge of some sort) and the firmware is altered, all of a sudden its reading both platters and you now have a 1TB drive or even a 2TB drive.

Just a theory but it makes sense to me so I'm sticking with it .. LOL

[rogfanther]

they were batches of used drives sold for parts etc.

That is your explanation . They were sold for parts, not as working drives. You can bet that someone had already tried to "fix" them, so that they could sell for more money. As it didn´t work, or is someone didn´t want to try very hard to fix them, they got sold as-is.