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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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Samsung drive F3 HD103SJ BSY all the time

March 14th, 2013, 12:36

Hi all,

I have got a samsung drive HD103SJ (F3 family).
The pcb is dead (Heads are fine) but the native ROM is dead also :/
I have smiliar working drive but the ROM chip is a little bit different from the patient drive. I believe that this is the reason why the drive keeps on BSY state.
Hot swap between the drives keeps on ready state (without any clicking noises) but without any access to the patient's SA. Seems like there are many UNC over the SA but I believe that the problem is different than the "many UNC" since I can't have access even to one single module.

Any why to recover the ROM chip? or cause the drive to work?
Any why to download any file to the drive or using some burning test technic?
I tried to write diffrent roms to the donor's pcb but for some resone PC3000 can't write those different ROM images to the donor's board -> it behaives like it writes the rom to the board but after finishing the writing it gives an error message and the native donor's rom chip leaves without any change.

This is the report out from the terminal without performing hot swap, only by puting the donor's pcb over the patient drive and power on the drive:
ActiveFW : 00
FWVer : 0001
DDR size detected = 32MB
SATA PLL cal done
*PA VID=0000 PN=0004 Rev=0002- 785x Found
*PA VID=0000 PN=0004 Rev=0002- 785x Found
U
S_0
RV Sensor Circuit Enabled
Shock Sensor Circuit Enabled
SO_1
SpinStartUp: mcSpinRPM = 48
RPM at Handoff: 667
Temp : 45 degC
SpinOk
mS1 00000003
SK C:112300 H:0
Boot Sector Error! Take a default.
Error to read FIT header ( 0: 0: 1)
Error to read FIT header ( 0: 1: 1)
Error to read FIT header ( 0: 2: 1)
Use default FIT
| 0 | FSI | 0 | 0 | 22 | 1140 |
| 0 | FSI | 0 | 1 | 22 | 1140 |
| 0 | FSI | 0 | 2 | 22 | 1140 |
| 0 | FSI | 39 | 0 | 22 | 1140 |
| 0 | FSI | 39 | 1 | 22 | 1140 |
| 0 | FSI | 39 | 2 | 22 | 1140 |
| 4 | MLIST | 0 | 0 | 10 | 1140 |
| 4 | MLIST | 0 | 1 | 10 | 1140 |
| 4 | MLIST | 0 | 2 | 10 | 1140 |
| 4 | MLIST | 39 | 0 | 10 | 1140 |
| 4 | MLIST | 39 | 1 | 10 | 1140 |
| 4 | MLIST | 39 | 2 | 10 | 1140 |
| 155 | SV_TBL | 0 | 0 | 23 | 1140 |
| 155 | SV_TBL | 0 | 1 | 23 | 1140 |
| 155 | SV_TBL | 0 | 2 | 23 | 1140 |
| 155 | SV_TBL | 39 | 0 | 23 | 1340 |
| 155 | SV_TBL | 39 | 1 | 23 | 1140 |
| 155 | SV_TBL | 39 | 2 | 23 | 1340 |
| 181 | RESO_TBL | 0 | 0 | 34 | 1140 |
| 181 | RESO_TBL | 0 | 1 | 34 | 1140 |
| 181 | RESO_TBL | 0 | 2 | 34 | 1140 |
file system read bad
| 12 | CHN_TBL | 0 | 0 | 40 | 1140 |
| 12 | CHN_TBL | 0 | 1 | 40 | 1140 |
| 12 | CHN_TBL | 0 | 2 | 40 | 1140 |
| 12 | CHN_TBL | 39 | 0 | 40 | 1140 |
| 12 | CHN_TBL | 39 | 1 | 40 | 1140 |
| 12 | CHN_TBL | 39 | 2 | 40 | 1140 |
| 13 | GEO_TBL | 0 | 0 | 116 | 1140 |
| 13 | GEO_TBL | 0 | 1 | 116 | 1140 |
| 13 | GEO_TBL | 0 | 2 | 116 | 1140 |
| 13 | GEO_TBL | 39 | 0 | 116 | 1140 |
| 13 | GEO_TBL | 39 | 1 | 116 | 1140 |
| 13 | GEO_TBL | 39 | 2 | 116 | 1140 |
| 157 | PARAM_DM | 0 | 0 | 176 | 1140 |
| 157 | PARAM_DM | 0 | 1 | 176 | 1140 |
| 157 | PARAM_DM | 0 | 2 | 176 | 1140 |
Fw Active 0000
| 115 | MOVLY001 | 1 | 0 | 10 | 1140 |
| 115 | MOVLY001 | 1 | 1 | 10 | 1140 |
| 115 | MOVLY001 | 1 | 2 | 10 | 1140 |
Overlay file read bad
| 178 | PROFILE | 0 | 0 | 191 | 1340 |
| 178 | PROFILE | 0 | 1 | 191 | 1340 |
| 178 | PROFILE | 0 | 2 | 191 | 1140 |


Many Thanks for any help :)
Last edited by Scorpion on March 14th, 2013, 12:38, edited 1 time in total.

Re: Samsung drive F3 HD103SJ BSY all the time

March 14th, 2013, 12:38

If native ROM is dead, you may be able to use BURN to restore it.

After hotswap you should get access to patient SA. Try to read SA from other surface as opposed to 0, all surfaces have copy and maybe alternative surface gives access - could be H0 is bad.

Re: Samsung drive F3 HD103SJ BSY all the time

March 14th, 2013, 12:47

hddguy wrote:If native ROM is dead, you may be able to use BURN to restore it.

After hotswap you should get access to patient SA. Try to read SA from other surface as opposed to 0, all surfaces have copy and maybe alternative surface gives access - could be H0 is bad.


I tried but nothing. None of the 4 copies gives access to the SA :/

What are the steps for recovering the native rom by burning test?

Re: Samsung drive F3 HD103SJ BSY all the time

March 14th, 2013, 13:36

Do you have the PC3K to do this one with? In the manual there is instructions on how to do this one.

Re: Samsung drive F3 HD103SJ BSY all the time

March 14th, 2013, 16:03

Before ' Wile E. Coyote ' -ish attacks on ROM (and be careful on not bricking the entire board !) I would check heads and MC. All the issue can be bads on it, but per my stats it is quite common to have weakened or non-working heads 'out of the blue' on these drives.

Re: Samsung drive F3 HD103SJ BSY all the time

March 14th, 2013, 17:07

BlackST wrote:Before ' Wile E. Coyote ' -ish attacks on ROM (and be careful on not bricking the entire board !) I would check heads and MC. All the issue can be bads on it, but per my stats it is quite common to have weakened or non-working heads 'out of the blue' on these drives.


Heads test doesn't seems to work on that drive with or without hotswap.
It shows like all the heads are bad with lots of UNC.
It might seem like a newbie question but I am not sure that I know what is MC.
Any way, is there another way to check the heads (and MC?) without the regular command heads test on PC3000?
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