Samsung sp2504c

[Casual]

I've posted this at another forum but recently found you guys and thought it worth posting here also.

The sp2504 was in a desktop on a desk that was jarred. Out of the ordinary fan noises began immediately, but no clicking or grinding noises from the drive. Upon restart, neither the sp2504 sata or another ata drive came up... I got the "enter system disk" message. Windows recovery console brought up the ATA drive and fixmbr got it going again, but the sata still isn't spinning and is not recognized by bios.

In restarting that machine several times, there was the occasional start and immediate shutdown. I still have to check that system out, but have moved the sata to another desktop that has had no aborted starts with that drive plugged in. It is still not spinning and not recognized by bios.

Obviously, I'd love to recover the data on this drive, but not at the expense of a professional service.

I'm reasonably intelligent, but woefully ignorant when it comes to hard drive hardware and settings... but learning by reading forums such as this one.

1. the board. I'm assuming it's the board because it's not spinning and not recognized. The readings on the tvs were not making sense so I lifted the power feed tvs and tried it on battery power - no change. The 0 ohm resistors in that area are good - continuity through each.


is there anything else I should check?

I've located a drive manufactured the same month as mine (2006.01)... the firmware seems to have been the same for months before and at least a month or so after that date. The board version seems to have remained constant through that period.

Q1: if I get a board from the same month, do I even need to swap the MCU chip with the rom info in it? Would it cause any damage to try it without swapping? If I did need to swap it, I'd probably take it to a repair shop as I've not lifted anything with so many fragile legs.

2. microcode... again, I'm woefully ignorant and reaching for straws here. Would this drive shut down (not spin / not be recognized) if there was code corruption on the platter? I've read of pinning a safe mode but haven't found much on it in my searches.

[Casual]

no replies... I guess this isn't the place to seek ("leech") advice / info that was hard won. Everyone here makes their living fixing drives / recovering data?

If so, my apologies for cluttering up your forum.

meanwhile - a donor board / drive arrived - manufactured the same month (2006.01 - panda)

swapping it was good news - bad news... the board spun up and looks to the SA - making a clicking pattern - 2 - 2 - 1 - repeat.

so the heads are going to the SA, but it's still not reading and not recognized by bios... which tells me something, but not enough for a diagnosis.

the marvel chip... the wording of "for that drive" that I read online has me confused... does each individual drive have specific info for that individual drive on it? Is particular info for the platters written to the rom during low level formatting or something?

Question is - with a donor board with the right date and numbers (4th character on the board sticker), do I still need to swap the marvel chip?

or should I start assuming the problem is further down the line - the pre-amp / heads / platter?

I'm calling around town looking for someone with a hot air de-soldering station - no luck. I guess I'll try chip-quik and do it myself... reason being that I should assume it's the rom before opening the drive and trying to replace the arm.

if nothing else, check back for the possibility of quality hard drive guru schadenfreude.

[jono-ats]

If you have access to a clean room, I'd check for heads / media damage before I'd do a MPU chip swap.

[Casual]

thanks - I did take a quick peek in a fairly dust free environment. Yes, I know the risks. I'm not looking to save the drive... just to get whatever data I can and trash it after.

the filter was clean and the 4 heads were at least intact and evenly spaced from the platters. No visible signs of damage to the preamp... not that that means anything.

If the SA area is on the bottom of the bottom patter, there's no way to look for a scratch or pit where the head may have touched it. The computer had been running for quite some time when the desk got bumped... I'm thinking it's unlikely the heads would have been in the SA area at that time unless it returns there as a default position or was in the process of changing smart data, etc.

from what I'm reading, I'm getting the idea that replacing everything but the platters inside would be easier that swapping the M chip - not that I'd ever attempt either without practicing on old drives and boards first. The preamp is so tiny that it's useless to even try messing with that alone.

the clicking is the heads going to the center of the platters and trying to read - then returning to park. At this point, again, I'm left wondering if there's something in the M chip on the old board that's needed to read this individual drive, or if the preamp or heads or a pit or other corruption on the platter won't allow it to read.

this drive is simple inside... heads park against the spindle - no ramps or anything in the way on the outer edge from the base up. If worse came to worse, I could see replacing the arm... after lots of practice on other drives. With the question of what's actually in the rom and whether they differ from board to board / drive to individual drive still unknown to me, I'm not going to do anything until I have a fairly sound plan of attack.

[Vulcan]

my apologies for cluttering up your forum

A word of advice: Without any smilies or apparent sincerity, your tone comes across as sarcastic and rude - neither of which are likely to make people keen to reply to you If that's what you meant, then fine - we got the message If not, you might consider a different approach next time.

You're asking for remote diagnosis, and sometimes that is just impossible to be certain about - but let's just go back to your original description because, although you may not like my analysis (and do, please, feel free to ignore it!), the most likely cause seems obvious to me Therefore I'll do you the courtesy of a reply, in the hope that it will help you.

The sp2504 was in a desktop on a desk that was jarred.

Unless there were already loose power connectors, then this type of external physical impact will (almost) never cause an electronic-related fault. External physical impact while a drive is spinning, is much, much, much more likely to cause a head crash (i.e. head/disk impact), or other internal mechanical damage, if the impact is severe enough.

Given that the drive must be able to read the SA before it can fully initialise, the fact that your drive is not recognised by the BIOS exactly fits with an inability to read the SA and hence to initialise. The original head impact does not need to have been in the SA, for the resulting head damage to then prevent the SA from being read later.

Just because you appear to want this to be an electronics-related issue, doesn't make it any more likely to be that

Therefore based on my experience of failure-analysis work with drives, I agree with jono-ats that head/media damage is the most likely place to start looking, simply because of your original description. Without a cleanroom, good lighting, an appropriate microscope and other equipment (and experience of what to look for), you can't do this checking to the level which is required. Therefore given that you say you don't want to involve a professional with that equipment, skills, suitable donor drives etc., I see no alternative than for this to be "game over".

From your earlier comments, I realise you won't like this reply, so I'll not waste your or my time on further discussions. Nonetheless, I do sincerely wish you good luck.

[Casual]

my apologies for cluttering up your forum

A word of advice: Without any smilies or apparent sincerity, your tone comes across as sarcastic and rude - neither of which are likely to make people keen to reply to you

no... no sarcasm meant. I'll re-read my language to see if I can detect why it may have given that impression. Perhaps a serious tone due to my predicament, or perhaps it was my using the word "leech", which I found used in another thread. While somewhat harsh, it may well be an accurate description of the view held by the majority here.

This may only be a place for people that know what they're talking about want to do so without constant "help me fix my busted drive for free" threads from those that have no clue where to start. ...and that's fine. I certainly understand if it is... I just haven't been around enough to know. My point was simply that I didn't mean to trespass. The older I get, the more I empathize with the old guy on his porch shaking his fist and telling those damned kids to get off his lawn.

On other forums, I know how annoying it can be to open what might appear to be an interesting thread only to have it be a question that's been asked a thousand times before for an answer that could have been easily found if the OP had bothered to do a simple search or made even the smallest attempt at educating themselves instead of expecting it to be handed to them on a silver platter... pardon the pun.

As for your thoughtful answer, which I do appreciate... I realize it may be head damage to at least the one head that reads the SA, but wanted to be sure it wasn't still a problem with the board - namely the rom on the M chip. I don't want to get ahead of myself and risk messing up what could have been a recoverable situation.

When I went back to the PC that got bumped, the motherboard soon died after a series of no starts and stalled starts. Something in line with the display is not working - not even a display card will bring anything to screen. Despite it being a decent quality power supply, I've got to believe the bump caused more than just a physical jolt. There were no loose screws in that pc - the result speaks for itself. I'm assuming the mb is a result of the bump... therefore have not ruled out the problem having been an electrical shock to the drive board that somehow got past the protection.

secondly... the drive would not spin up until I swapped the board from a suitable donor. It then spun up and the clicking began. Now it could be that the old board shut itself down after failing to read the SA once, and the new board would do the same if it could actually read it... I just don't know.

It may also be that the new donor board solved one problem, only to reveal more problems - the pre amp or head or platter. Or... it's just the M chip needing swapped. Without knowing if the chip needs swapped, only equipment I don't have (and the experience to use it) would be able to tell.

as I now have a suitable donor, it may come down to me practicing on old drives until I feel somewhat comfortable trying to swap arm assemblies from one to the other. Before that point, I'll have to mentally give it up for dead and view success as a totally unexpected bonus. As I said earlier, on the surface, the arm assembly swap seems much easier than trying to swap that 128 pin marvel chip... but doing what seems easiest first doesn't seem to be a pragmatic approach.

[jono-ats]

It's a lucky day when "doing what is easiest" lines up with "fixing what is wrong."

Why don't you start buy comparing the writing on the two MPUs.

[Casual]

that I can do!

old board: 88i6525-tfj1 / ypmo1021 / 0547 a5p / tw

donor: 88i6525-tfj1 / ypmo1245 / 0551 a5p / tw


from Scott Moultan's site, I came away thinking that the 4th character on the sticker was the important part that needed to match... which they do - both starting "panda".

Other boards I've seen do not match - this donor the only one.

[jono-ats]

Looks like your boards and FW match. A photo of the front of the drive would be helpful.

Probably there was an overvoltage condition in your PC that took out the logic board on the original drive -- and maybe the preamp too.

Nothing like having the right gear to pin down an accurate diagnosis, nomesayin'?

[Casual]

yes, I know what u sezzin

taking a readable pic isn't as easy as it should be, but turns out the 5th attempt is the charm

exceeds the 1024 pixel wide limit here. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8286013/451%20crop.jpg

donor on the right

in looking at various dates of manufacture for the donor, months before and at least a month after had "F/W VT100-33" under where it says "Rev. A". After that, it seemed to go up a number each month. That info wasn't printed on either of these

line 2: E-H011-05-1237(B) remained the same for more than a year after, if it's ever changed.

I felt lucky in getting such a good match... question remains, is something in the rom different for each individual drive?

if not, I should spend the weekend practicing on old drives and try to give the donor preamp and heads a shot at it. It's not like those 5 gig scsi drives I've got are going to be used anytime soon.

I'm trying my best to view it all as an "adventure".