Hitachi HUC103030CSS600 dead drives

[gizmo4321]

Hi all; first time n00b post, so please be gentle.

As mentioned in the subject, I've got some Hitach HUCH103030CSS600 drives. The drives all have a big "PRE-QSS SAMPLE" across the cover, so I'm assume these are some sort of pre-production drives. As I got them in a bin of of junk, I didn't spend much on them, but it would be nice if I could get them to work.

Basically, here's the deal: I've got 8 of these drives. When I plug them into my SAS controller, only one of them even seems to ID itself to the controller; the rest just sit there like big lumps. The drive that DOES ID itself doesn't seem to spin up. I've contacted Hitachi to see if I could obtain some replacement parts (specifically circuit boards, as I'm assuming an apparently completely dead drive is in such a state because the control board is toast). To my surprise, not only do Hitachi not have any parts, they don't even offer a service to repair/refurbish out of warranty drives. So, they essentially told me to go get bent.

Is there any hope of getting these drives going/obtaining repair parts? Or should I just throw them in the bin?

[ppumkin]

You took them out of the bin.. to bin them again. I can understand the logic there.

Maybe it sounded like a good idea but HDD manufacturers just sell hard drives.They dont really care what happens to them once they out of warranty. They dont even guarantee your data will be safe on them.. pretty ironic. Heheh

The drive that does not spin up is most likely ID'ing its self from the PCB- so the PCB CPU is working.. but maybe the stepper controller is dead or there is sticking in side the hdd.

You can get parts of internet auction sites and look in the selling.buying section of this forum for people who supply PCB's

Those are nice HDD's and i see why you might want to try and save them... but i think your chances are slim.

It all depends on your knowledge in electronics.. because on PCB level thats basically all you have to know to trace the fault. Inside the HDD... years of experience.
Worth the experiment though i guess.

Good Luck

[gizmo4321]

Thanks ppumkin.

You took them out of the bin.. to bin them again. I can understand the logic there.

Well, you never know what you will find in a 'box of parts'.

Maybe it sounded like a good idea but HDD manufacturers just sell hard drives.They dont really care what happens to them once they out of warranty. They dont even guarantee your data will be safe on them.. pretty ironic. Heheh

Yeah, when I realized that 'Partial Response, Maximum Likelihood (PRML)" translated to "this is our best guess as to what data is actually on the drive", I started getting a little concerned....... It just surprised me that Hitachi wouldn't offer a repair service. I'd think that would be something that would be a profitable operation, but I guess drives have gotten so cheap now that it's no longer cost effective.

The drive that does not spin up is most likely ID'ing its self from the PCB- so the PCB CPU is working.. but maybe the stepper controller is dead or there is sticking in side the hdd.

You can get parts of internet auction sites and look in the selling.buying section of this forum for people who supply PCB's

I've tried searching for parts on the internet (basic Google search). I haven't turned up anything, though that's probably due to my general inexperience in the area and not having a good feel for what search terms to use. All the places I contracted that said they dealt in such things also said they didn't have any parts for that drive.

[ppumkin]

Yea - they are rare drives. And I can only assume if a customer brought those in for recovery the price would not be cheaper than £1000 to do that and could rise.

Try finding some older more popular driver to tinker with