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Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
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HM160HC not spinning, BUSY forever

June 6th, 2009, 16:39

Dear all,

I have a Samsung HM160HC which is not spinning, and is showing BUSY right after powered on, and stays like that forever.
Trying it with a similar board, it does spin up, so I assume it's a PCB fault, so I try to repair it.
I've compared all resistors, diodes, capacitors, etc with a multimeter to the known good one, and found no significant difference anywhere. The three components I could not test are:
-Marvell 88i6723S-BCT1 (no pinout, and BGA)
-TI TLS2502B (no pinout)
-the white SOT23-6(?) packaged component with a marking like "bd."(?) on it (next to the Marvell chip), as I don't know what it is

As I'm getting at least a BUSY, can I assume that the Marvell processor is working?
If so, how come it's not writing anything about the error on the serial port (not a single byte)?

Could you please advise where my reasoning is wrong?

Thanks in advance,
Peter

Re: HM160HC not spinning, BUSY forever

June 6th, 2009, 17:00

kovacsp wrote:Dear all,

I have a Samsung HM160HC which is not spinning, and is showing BUSY right after powered on, and stays like that forever.
Trying it with a similar board, it does spin up, so I assume it's a PCB fault, so I try to repair it.
I've compared all resistors, diodes, capacitors, etc with a multimeter to the known good one, and found no significant difference anywhere. The three components I could not test are:
-Marvell 88i6723S-BCT1 (no pinout, and BGA)
-TI TLS2502B (no pinout)
-the white SOT23-6(?) packaged component with a marking like "bd."(?) on it (next to the Marvell chip), as I don't know what it is

As I'm getting at least a BUSY, can I assume that the Marvell processor is working?
If so, how come it's not writing anything about the error on the serial port (not a single byte)?

Could you please advise where my reasoning is wrong?

Thanks in advance,
Peter


Hi,

The samsung's pcb is sensitive for exchanging.
Maybe the HDA is assembled with different brand heads, or another version/brand of preamp, or just simple the ROM is not compatible with the MC in the platters.
But as you know allready, the diagnose is free @ my lab, and if i have right, this case is cheap or relatively cheap. :wink:

Janos

Re: HM160HC not spinning, BUSY forever

June 6th, 2009, 17:16

Hi Janos,

thanks for your reply.
I'm not trying to make it work with the other PCB, as I know it's far from being a good donor. I'm trying to repair the original PCB, so the components should not be incompatible with each other (unless somebody else swapped it before).

Best regards,
Peter

Re: HM160HC not spinning, BUSY forever

June 6th, 2009, 17:29

kovacsp wrote:Hi Janos,

thanks for your reply.
I'm not trying to make it work with the other PCB, as I know it's far from being a good donor. I'm trying to repair the original PCB, so the components should not be incompatible with each other (unless somebody else swapped it before).

Best regards,
Peter


if you want to repair the old pcb, i can imagine 3 options:
1. VCD bad
2. some fuse is blown
3. ROM corruption in MCU (i have no @ hand, i am not sure it is internal or external, but if i have right, it is internal)

Maybe helps....

Janos

Re: HM160HC not spinning, BUSY forever

June 6th, 2009, 17:29

+1 extra: this is not the original pcb

Re: HM160HC not spinning, BUSY forever

June 6th, 2009, 17:34

N.C. wrote:if you want to repair the old pcb, i can imagine 3 options:
1. VCD bad
2. some fuse is blown
3. ROM corruption in MCU (i have no @ hand, i am not sure it is internal or external, but if i have right, it is internal)

Yes it's internal. Is there any way to check if the ROM is corrupted?

Thanks,
Peter

Re: HM160HC not spinning, BUSY forever

June 6th, 2009, 17:38

without proper tool, no. :(

You can only close out the other cases.
If everithing is good in the pcb, but the drive is still busy, than it is ROM corruption.

Re: HM160HC not spinning, BUSY forever

June 6th, 2009, 17:58

Janos, thank you very much!

Peter

Re: HM160HC not spinning, BUSY forever

June 6th, 2009, 18:20

Damn I am so far... I should have diagnosed it in seconds...

Re: HM160HC not spinning, BUSY forever

June 7th, 2009, 1:20

BlackST wrote:Damn I am so far... I should have diagnosed it in seconds...

Did you mean method of swap...?

Re: HM160HC not spinning, BUSY forever

June 7th, 2009, 1:51

No. Head check, Rom check and eventually fix it, mc (=sa) check and fix, etc. Need to open only for surface check (scored platter)

Re: HM160HC not spinning, BUSY forever

June 7th, 2009, 7:22

BlackST wrote:No. Head check, Rom check and eventually fix it, mc (=sa) check and fix, etc. Need to open only for surface check (scored platter)

What tool do you use to check and fix the ROM inside the Marvell processor? I mean do you have access to Marvell develpoment tools, or you have a different method (own method)?

Thanks,
Peter

Re: HM160HC not spinning, BUSY forever

June 7th, 2009, 9:09

Own / proprietary. Note: sometimes the marvell chip fail and it's game over... New pcb req'd.

Re: HM160HC not spinning, BUSY forever

June 7th, 2009, 17:04

BlackST wrote:Own / proprietary. Note: sometimes the marvell chip fail and it's game over... New pcb req'd.

Thanks for your help! So I can start looking for an exact matching PCB..

Re: HM160HC not spinning, BUSY forever

August 27th, 2009, 6:12

Hi,

I have several Samsung HM160HC drives I decided to play around with. I found it interesting to read that these drives have a serial interface and now I would like to listen to it. Can one of you tell me to which pads I need to connect? Any additional information (about the possibilities one has with the serial interface [how to interpret the information the drive sends, terminal commands, etc...] or about the drive itself) would also be great.

Guspi

Re: HM160HC not spinning, BUSY forever

August 27th, 2009, 7:43

kovacsp wrote:Hi Janos,

thanks for your reply.
I'm not trying to make it work with the other PCB, as I know it's far from being a good donor. I'm trying to repair the original PCB, so the components should not be incompatible with each other (unless somebody else swapped it before).

Best regards,
Peter



Have you swapped the TI motor driver IC? I have seen them fail in this model.

Re: HM160HC not spinning, BUSY forever

October 31st, 2020, 12:42

Hello, somebody know how I can accesr to ROM in The MCU for HDD Samsung HM121HC, on the chip 88i6723S ? Thank you

Re: HM160HC not spinning, BUSY forever

November 3rd, 2020, 4:31

reading or writing?
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