I really don't understand, why do you think it's corrupted
seems fine to me

How does the "corrupted" ROM differ from the original?

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

YES

_________________
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Bom Dia,

I've read and saved ROM images of a number of drives -- it would take me a bit to sort out what's what for comparison, and I wouldn't be able to get to it for awhile.

I'm well aware of the ROM differences between the Pebble Beach and the Spyglass, and the ROM I was trying to transfer to the SATA PCB was from the same family.

Programming killed the board. I physically soldered back in the original ROM, and the PCB did not come back to life. I could not re-program the ROM on the SATA PCB through the SATA port. I'm not sure where the COM port terminals are for the SATA version, but I have a query in to WD for that info. I was going to try to see if I could reprogram the ROM through the COM port.

I think these small PCBs are a bit fragile. There is a BGA chip near the EEPROM and I think you have to be careful when thermal cycling and flexing the board.

Obrigado . . .

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Hi,

If the board died, have you tried to do some things to it "in the name of science" ?

I mean, the bga chip ( the SDRAM ) is reasonably far from the flash chip , but I understand that some rough manipulation ( or flexing it to isolate head contacts ) could really damage a board, mostly so if it is still warm. And just to be sure I´m not saying something wrong, in this hdd the connector for the HSA is that white plastic one, right ?

Disconsidering the flexing of the board, my other bet would be with solder problems in the corner of the big chip near the rom. That @#$ encapsulation is hard to get soldered right, and very easy to create cold solder joints when working near it. Maybe if the board is already considered toast you can try to resolder that region of the chip to see if something changes.

I am just going for the research of the cause / possible solution, so some questions or suggestions are in the name of research. You and the OP probably know or have tried most of this already, but I am trying to think of an approach to detect possible place of failure.

One next ideia would be to find someone with enough free time and measure resistance around all of the test points/contacts disponible to see if some circuit got opened. I have a seagate board here where I heated it too much when trying to swap the sata connector, and some vias got damaged. Now the board woun´t start anymore.

The flex part would be harder to avoid, but can´t some jig with pogo pins be devised to program the flash without desoldering ?

Rather than wait for WD's tech support (their people get their info from the Internet, anyway), why not find the UART port yourself?

AIUI, you know where to find the Tx/Rx pins on the USB PCB. Trace these pins back to the MCU. Use your DMM if the traces are not visible.

Now locate these same MCU pins on the SATA PCB. These will be the UART pins (I'm assuming that the MCUs are the same). Now trace these UART pins back to a connector or test point, or whatever is appropriate. AISI, that should only require a few minutes of your time.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

adding to the notes on this spyglass pebble issue:


Put spyglass rom on sata converted pebble
now board just flashes and doesnt spin up.
trying to recover the spyglass

Donor===========
i took a board 800041-000-revp1
C:\PC3k\!Profiles\WDCMarvell\Pebbleb\WDC WD30NMVW-11C3NS2-01-01A01-WD-WXC1E25D0PY3
converted to sata
put it back on the drive and the drive works fine
then I wrote the patients rom to it
now it flashes
It doesnt spin up
cant get into kernel mode
cant bootcode mode either
going to have to resolder the rom to reprogram it.

=============== patient
patient board is same
C:\PC3k\!Profiles\WDCMarvell\Pebbleb\WDC WD40NMZW-11GX6S1-01-01A01-4590_carl\Data\ROM
same exact board number 800041-000-revp1

One is spyglass other is pebble
I could read both roms through the serial port.
if I convert to sata can I decrypt
or repair ?
Can I fix sa slow problems through sata then convert back to USB

hddinfo patient ============
Version
0x0002
Controller firmware revision
01.4VP
Servo firmware revision
02.7A
Overlay firmware revision
01.4VP
Surface format revision
EX.076
Read channel firmware revision
A1.74000
Drive type
Mobile 2.5 Inch
Interface type
Serial ATA
PCBA type
Entek rev 0
ROM type
Serial Flash
Flash size (page size)
512 (4) kB
DRAM size (allocated)
131072 (126852) kB
Drive Parts Information
Controller chip vendor
0x0000
Controller chip revision
0x5450 88i1047F0
MicroP vendor
0x0000
MicroP revision
0x5450
Channel chip vendor
0x001A
Channel chip revision
0x0020
Preamp vendor
0x0000
Preamp revision
0x0001
Power chip vendor
0x0000
Power chip revision
0x8322
Drive Build Information
Product ID (Ext)
0x16FE (0x022E)
Model
WDC ROM MODEL-SPYGLASS-
Serial number
WDC-ROM SN# XYZ----

========================================
source board C:\PC3k\!Profiles\WDCMarvell\Pebbleb\WDC WD30NMVW-11C3NS2-01-01A01-WD-WXC1E25D0PY3
Techno mode key
Techno mode key......................... : Ok

RAM:
HDD Info reading........................ : Ok
Heads number............................ : 10
Cyl Count............................... : 256

Zone allocation table................... : Ok
SA SPT.................................. : 1782

ROM:
Read ROM................................ : Ok
ROM Data size........................... : 512 Kb
Flash ROM dir reading................... : Ok (Active)
Flash ROM dir reading (Ext)............. : Ok
Modules directory address............... : 31 997
SA regions address...................... : by default
Module 02 access........................ : Granted
SA Translator loading................... : Ok

ROM Modules:
ROM version............................. : 01.3CC
ROM F/W version......................... : 0001003C
Overlay F/W version..................... : 01.3DC
Servo F/W version....................... : G3.08

Heads configuration..................... : by map
Heads number............................ : 10
Heads number in use..................... : 10
Switched off heads...................... : No
Heads map............................... : 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9

Service area:
Permanent overlay....................... : Not loaded
SA dir reading (ID)..................... : Ok
SA Access............................... : Copy 0,Copy 1,Copy 2,Copy 3
Configuration reading................... : Ok
Master Password......................... : has not been set
User Password........................... : has not been set

=== source board hddinfo
Version
0x0002
Controller firmware revision
01.3CC
Servo firmware revision
G3.08
Overlay firmware revision
01.3DC
Surface format revision
A1.002
Read channel firmware revision
A1.74000
Drive type
Mobile 2.5 Inch
Interface type
Serial ATA
PCBA type
Entek rev 0
ROM type
Serial Flash
Flash size (page size)
512 (4) kB
DRAM size (allocated)
65536 (55641) kB
Drive Parts Information
Controller chip vendor
0x0000
Controller chip revision
0x5450 88i1047F0
MicroP vendor
0x0000
MicroP revision
0x5450
Channel chip vendor
0x001A
Channel chip revision
0x0020
Preamp vendor
0x0001
Preamp revision
0x0003
Power chip vendor
0x0000
Power chip revision
0x8320
Drive Build Information
Product ID (Ext)
0x16FE (0x025A)
Model
WDC WD30NMVW-11C3NS2
Serial number
WD-WXC1E25D0PY3
DCM
S|BWL|P2MJH5C2RHV2KCUB
Original built date
10-05-2015
Reconfiguration date
10-05-2015
Drive platters5
Physical heads10
Virtual heads10
Depop bit map0x00
Zones61
Servo wedges312
Negative cylinders256
Spindle RPM5400
User cylinders0
Cylinder wedge skew31
Head skew78
Cluster skew112

_________________
Expert in data recovery, RAID, VMware, Linux, Tape, Forensics, Cleanroom...
http://www.alandatarecovery.com

spyglass boards dying....

I suspect that we may be damaging the boards when removing them from the body.

the head connector can be pretty stiff
the pcb is very thin
so perhaps the board is flexed too much and some of the ballgrids get broken.

I have started using a tool to pry the head connector rather than stressing the board.

_________________
Expert in data recovery, RAID, VMware, Linux, Tape, Forensics, Cleanroom...
http://www.alandatarecovery.com

I have given up trying to use SATA boards for these USB drives. I now have several of the USB boards with SATA connections soldered. Much easier and does not kill the board.

_________________
HDD, SSD, Flash and RAID Data Recovery
Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group

@ddrecovery, for research purposes, do you also agree that the act of removing the board from the hdd is what damages it ? So you just solder a sata connector to it while still screwed to the hard disk ?

or the key detail would be when writing the rom to a new (sata) board ?

We put the SATA connector on the USB board off the drive as you have to remove some caps to do this.

I don't think its heat from soldering that is killing the SATA board as we soldered the patient ROM to the USB board on several occasions as a test and have not had the same issue. The boards are basically the same boards so you would have through the issue would have affected both.

So maybe it is a flexing issue, as @drdoc, we use a pry tool at the bottom of the board just under the connector and the board comes off without flexing. In fact we do a similar thing now with Rosewood drives. So maybe the flexing was the issue before we learnt how to handle them.

I have also had a few SATA boards die while working on the drive SA blocking mods etc, so it maybe its a really bad design or has a faulty chip.

_________________
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Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group

ddrecovery:

when you convert to sata.

Are there issues decrypting the data?
Does pc3k handle spyglass encrytion?
What about service area - can you fix sa issues ?

_________________
Expert in data recovery, RAID, VMware, Linux, Tape, Forensics, Cleanroom...
http://www.alandatarecovery.com

I have had issues with this. I have used someone on the forum to decrypt one for me where we had limited access to the SA (PM me).


No it doesn't (yet).


Yes.

_________________
HDD, SSD, Flash and RAID Data Recovery
Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group

Working on it.

_________________
http://www.datasaversllc.com

Perhaps equally important is care in putting the PCB back on the drive.
Got a hold of a SATA Pebble Beach PCB and the pins on the connector are loose/damaged.

_________________
Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Hi, Have you ruled out the programming voltages?
The new drives with latest pcbs are very rom sensitive.
They start to behave very differently and writing ROM back to these drives while they spin too can also be of problem with DFL atleast. However the thing does its job.
I would highly doubt the programming voltages.
--

Our testing has shown lower voltages (1.8v). But the initial PCB's that failed we physically swapped the ROM so that wasn't the issue.

_________________
HDD, SSD, Flash and RAID Data Recovery
Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group