About random firmware problems

[gacpac]

Firmware problems are solved with firmware tools. The physical problems with changing parts mostly.

It is possible that a hard drive after falling have symptoms of problems with the firmware?

I do this question because a friend tells me he dropped the hard drive and the only weird thing is that the hard drive now remains BSY. I was trying to do something in factory safe mode and don't know if I'm doing something wrong because it gives me error and no reads

A guy told me that if the hard drive have dropped we need to assume that first we need to fix the physical problem, but in this case i don't think the problem be physical.

[gacpac]

Firmware problems are solved with firmware tools. The physical problems with changing parts mostly.

It is possible that a hard drive after falling have symptoms of problems with the firmware?

I do this question because a friend tells me he dropped the hard drive and the only weird thing is that the hard drive now remains BSY. I was trying to do something in factory safe mode and don't know if I'm doing something wrong because it gives me error and no reads

A guy told me that if the hard drive have dropped we need to assume that first we need to fix the physical problem, but in this case i don't think the problem be physical.

Sorry for posting in wrong side u.u my bad how can i delete this post?

[labtech]

More than likely physical than firmware. Firmware is code. Can't be "physically" damaged.
It is about where it resides making it inaccessible due to other components being physically damaged from a physical shock.

[gacpac]

A damaged head will not read the firmware code.
A head that hits the platter on the SA zone/track and damage it will also cause firmware issues.
Drive might be BSY because the firmware can't be properly read.
What is the model of the drive ?
Do you need the data from it ?
Are you willing to pay to get the data back ?

Well it's a WD My Book with WD Green 1TB, those external hard drives are weird because they are kind of encrypted with the PCB with usb interface. Also this PCB isn't working because i connected another drive to it and didn't recognize as i was specting.

And thanks for the help!!

[labtech]

Can you elaborate on what "didn't recognize" mean exactly?
Also, a fault free functional HDD will work the same regardless of data being encrypted or not. Now, the USB bridge controller that is mounted on the HDD can fail, too. So, they're are two different things to test.

[gacpac]

Well, the usb bridge apparently stays busy because I did not detect any disk that connects him, we could say that is defective. On the other hand though this hard drive encryption for usb bridge must be detected as a normal disk but not showing me data and initialize at least ask.

Already with other WD me to check it worked, but it seems strange that both the usb bridge and hard drive to act in the same way.

[fzabkar]

I am corresponding with a WD user whose My Book Essential bridge enumerates via USB if the HDD is disconnected but not when the HDD is connected. I also notice that some bridges (not WD) will not enumerate if a HDD is not present. Therefore the failure of the bridge to enumerate does not conclusively prove that the bridge is faulty.

Instead, a conclusive test of the USB interface would involve invalidating the serial EEPROM so that the bridge firmware powers up in "firmware download" mode. In this mode an Initio bridge would identify itself as an Initio Default Controller. I don't know how a symwave bridge would react, but I would expect that the behaviour would be similar.

The way to invalidate the EEPROM would be to short its HOLD pin to ground while powering up the bridge PCB. The HDD can be disconnected for this test.