Hi all,

I own this HDD since 2006, began to have issues during the last 2 years, when switching on the drives, occasionally they did not spin, off/on/off/on eventually all was running fine again.

Recently, the disks did not show up anymore on my W7 or any other OS, tried Linux too.
To exclude the power supply (well known to have problems) I purchased a new one, but did not help.
The power light blinks at the beginning and then stops blinking and stays blue as it should.

I pulled out the two disks from the enclosure, 2x250GB WD2500JB.
I removed the jumper and powered then separately with an IDE to USB device, none of the two disks seems to spin, neither is seen by the PC, and if I go to disk management, I can see the disk(s) but once I try to initialize them, I get 'device is not ready'.

Strange thing is that when I start them in their LaCie enclosure, they seem to spin (both) but cannot be seen, not even in disk management.

One important thing here: I do not care about the content, I had a backup so I just want to find out if I can recover those two disks or not.

Can you help?

Alex

ISTM that the drives may be configured to Power Up In Standby (PUIS).

If so, you could use HDAT2 to disable PUIS. You would need to start HDAT2 with the /w switch to wake up the drives, ie ...

HDAT2 /w

There may be other problems, though.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Hi,

Thanks for your suggestion, but I need some help here as I am not familiar with DOS.
My target is to get the HDD to be visible and working again on my PC, if they are still good.

Given that in its enclosure the disks seem to spin, shall I use the original LaCie enclosure and try to boot with the CD ?
If yes, what shall I do as a first step if the disk is not seen?

Thank you,
Alex

The enclosure is a problem because it limits your access to the drives. It sounds like your Lacie has a RAID 0, so if one disc is down, then the RAID will be down.

I would persevere with HDAT2. You may need to temporarily reconfigure the SATA controller in BIOS for legacy or IDE compatibility mode.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Hi,

I am now trying to boot with the CD after having changed the SATA controller in bios to ATE.
I connected one single disk to the PC via USB, selected the option 1, I get a bunch of errors, like ATAPI cannot communicate with drive correctly and then to the bottom: SATA S:\>

Can you help?

Alex

Connect it directly to the motherboard via SATA.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

The disk is connected via USB to a eSATA connector in my laptop, but I guess you mean to use a SATA connector from the disk to the eSATA port in the laptop?
If so I am out of luck as I do not have such a connector, not at the moment.

No other possibilities?

Alex

OK forget and let's start from the beginning.
For whatever reason, now, when I plug in the disks in the laptop via USB I get results in the disk management:

Disk 1: I was able to initialize it, it is now unallocated.
Disk 2: I get: you need to format the disk before using it.

I did not format disk 2 and tried the LaCie enclosure, nothing different from before.

Shall I format the disk 2?

I wonder where the issue is... but at least they seem to be alive.

Alex

I formatted both disks and they are both working fine when plugged in with my IDE to USB cable, which leads me to conclude that the issue is somewhere in the enclosure.

I'd exclude the 80 ribbon cable, although I will check it or the power ones, they have no stress in that enclosure.
What I may think of is the blue switch, that's the one under major stress...
I changed already the power supply and it provides the right voltage.

Do you have any suggestion/best practice on how to spot the faulty electronics?

Thanks
Alex

Anybody?

Hi,

The power cables send the right voltage and the discs spin once the switch is on.

I really do not know what else to do, is it something with the circuit board or anything else I can try software wise?

Alex

I just realised your drives (WD2500JB) are PATA, not SATA. Sorry for leading you astray.

As for the Lacie enclosure, do you have a link to the manual?

Do both drives spin up at the same time, or are the spinups staggered? If the latter, then this would suggest that the bridge IC inside the enclosure is either communicating with the drives, or controlling power to them via an electronic switch.


Do you mean to say that the drives spin up without an IDE cable being connected? If so, then that discounts the PUIS idea.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Hi,

Here is the link to the manual: http://www.lacie.com/download/manual/bi ... eme_en.pdf


To be honest with you, I do not know, too much noise from my PC to hear it...


I mean that I measured with a multimeter the voltage of the two IDE cables in the LaCie enclosure and I get the 5V + 12V.

Alex

The problem is that we don't know if the bridge IC inside the enclosure is able to communicate with either the drives or the outside world. The IDE cables I'm referring to are the 80-way ribbons. If the drives spin up without these ribbons, it means that they don't require a spinup command from the bridge IC. OTOH, if they don't spin up, then this means that the bridge IC must be communicating with them.

Do the drives spin up if the enclosure is not connected to a USB or FireWire port? If not, then this would suggest that the bridge IC requires a signal from the host, which would in turn suggest that the bridge is probably alive.

If the drives do spin up without a PC host, then switch off the PC and listen to each of them.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Hi,

Both drives spin up without the 80-way ribbon cable and without being connected to the USB port.
I took some pictures so that will be easier to see what's inside.

Thanks
Alex

Thanks for the photos. They're a bit blurry, but ISTM that the functions of the 3 boards may be as follows.

PCB #1 - power switch and LED indicator (IMG_4194)
PCB #2 - power controller (IMG_4198)
PCB #3 - bridge PCB (IMG_4199)

PCB #1 appears to have a "soft" on/off switch and an indicator LED.

PCB #2 has a large 44-pin controller IC whose markings I can't discern. I suspect it controls the power to each of the drives via the 4 switching transistors (?) to the left of the Molex connector pair. The remainder of the circuitry is obscured by the cabling. The 6-way connector links this board with PCB #3.

PCB #3 contains an ATA Host Controller (whose markings I can't make out, so I'm not certain of this), TSB81BA3 3-port IEEE1394b transceiver, and a TUSB6250PFCR USB 2.0 ATA/ATAPI Bridge. This board communicates with the drive and with the PC host.

ISTM that the bridge board may be dead. One way to test this idea may be to disconnect PCB #3 from PCB #2 and then try to power up the drives with PCB #2 and PCB #1 on their own. Verify that the on/off switch is still able to control the drives, and that the LED still works.

If your testing confirms that PCBs #1 and #2 are OK, then hook up PCB #3 to the others. You can leave both drives disconnected. Now carefully measure the voltages at each pin of the "1117M" device adjacent to the USB port. This device is a 3-terminal LDO regulator (eg LM1117M-3.3). I suspect that it reduces the incoming +5V supply to +3.3V. Do not slip with your probes, as catastrophic damage will probably result. Use a screw hole as your ground reference.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Hi there,

Your analysis is correct:

PCB #1 - power switch and LED indicator
PCB #2 - power controller
PCB #3 - bridge PCB



Both drives spin up and the LED is stable blue from the beginning, whatever drive I plug to the longer molex has a delay (few secs) to start comparing to the one plugged in the shorter molex.



The first thing I noticed when measuring the LDO regulator 1117M is that regardless whether the switch is ON or OFF, the voltage does not change.
I had to do this with both PCBs outside of the case, I mean none of the two was screwed to the enclosure, but obviously in contact with the switch through the wires.
I put the black probe in a screw hole of the enclosure.

If you look at the 3 legs from the top:

1117M3
| | |
2V 3.2V 5.2V

2V is the leg closer to the USB port, while 5.2V is the leg next to the 6-way connector.

What do you think?

Now, better photos...

Thank you!
Alex

The 1117M3 is an adjustable LDO regulator that is set for 3.3V. It is working correctly. After looking at the datasheets of the components on the bridge PCB, ISTM that all are probably powered from that same regulator.

There are two signal traces connecting the control PCB to the bridge PCB, but I confess that I don't understand their purpose. Unless the bridge PCB is missing some requisite information from the control PCB, IMHO the bridge PCB is most likely dead. Moreover, since neither the USB nor the FireWire ports are working, then it would appear that the OXFW912 bridge IC is the most likely culprit. If I'm correct, then I can't see any solution that would be both expedient and economical.

BTW, here are various datasheets that may be of help to others:

TUSB6250PFC, Texas Instruments, USB 2.0 to ATA/ATAPI Bridge Controller, 3.3V, 80TQFP:
http://www.ti.com/product/tusb6250
http://www.ti.com/lit/gpn/tusb6250

TSB81BA3, Texas Instruments, 3-port IEEE1394b transceiver, 3.3V:
http://www.ti.com/product/tsb81ba3
http://www.ti.com/lit/gpn/tsb81ba3
http://www.ti.com/lit/pdf/sllz015

1117M3, Low Dropout Linear Regulator, adjustable:
http://www.st.com/web/en/resource/techn ... 000544.pdf
http://www.utc-ic.com/uploadfile/2011/0 ... 520257.pdf
http://www.mouser.com/ds/2/146/spx1117-247041.pdf

XC9536XL, Xilinx, CPLD, 3.3V:
http://www.xilinx.com/support/documenta ... /ds058.pdf

SN74LVC10A, Texas Instruments, triple 3-input positive-NAND gate, 1.65V - 3.6V:
http://www.ti.com/general/docs/lit/getl ... leType=pdf

SN74AHC74, Texas Instruments, Dual Positive-Edge-Triggered D-Type Flip-Flops With Clear and Preset, marking HA74, 2V - 5.5V:
http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/sn74ahc74.pdf

24LC256, Microchip, 256Kbit, 32K x 8, I2C CMOS Serial EEPROM, 1.7V to 5.5V:
http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/d ... 21203p.pdf

OXFW912, Oxford Semiconductor, marking FW912, 1394B-to- ATA7/ATAPI Bridge. Firewire800. Firewire400. USB 2.0:
http://www.semiconductorstore.com/pdf/n ... 912_PB.pdf
http://datasheet.eeworld.com.cn/pdf/OXF ... XFW912.pdf

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

I did not try the FW port because I do not have one on my laptop, but I have a FW PCI card that I can mount on an old desktop PC so that I can test it.
Given that both discs spin up, would you exclude any issues with the 80 ribbon cable?

I guess I cannot find the bridge PCB as a spare part, right?

How about if I buy two enclosures for the two discs just to get two separate storages? That should not be an issue, at least I can use the discs.

Alex

If you're looking for a spare bridge PCB, I would search for the numbers on the sticker on the bottom of the PCB, or preferably for any numbers under the sticker on the PCB itself. Be aware that some numbers will be YYWW (Year / Week) date codes.

As for your question regarding the ribbon cable, all I can say is that some bridge firmware is configured to identify the enclosure only if the drive(s) come ready, while other bridge firmware will enumerate the enclosure to the host PC even if no drives are present.

One other thing I've noticed is that one of the 6 interconnection pins is a "switched +5V pin", probably from the second drive. Therefore ISTM that the bridge probably has a way to detect if the last drive is receiving power.

The +5V supply and Ground pins, however, are wired directly to the power input and are not switched.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.