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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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HDDZone bad Hitachi 0A90302 pcb selling??

November 7th, 2013, 10:02

Hello,
i've this Hitachi drive:
HDS723020BLA642
fw: 180
PCB: 100-0A90302-01
MCU: 0J11390

Drive usually spins but is not detect in the bios, sometimes when i power on does few heads clicking and spins down.
I know it can be some internal problem but as i know could be bad pcb too...
So i bought this donor pcb from HDDZone:
http://www.hddzone.com/hitachi-pcb-0a90302-p-464.html

I swapped the NVRAM from patient pcb to donor pcb (i did very good soldering job, i'm an electronic technician), but now the drive doesn't spin (never).

If i connect the donor pcb with my NVRAM, pc3k stay in BSY status register.
If i connect the donor pcb with donor NVRAM, pc3k stay in BSY status register.
If i connect my original pcb with my NVRAM, pc3k goes in DRDY and DSC status register (i soldered back the original NVRAM on the original pcb and the drive spins again too).

It's correct to think that this pcb they selled to me is faulty?
Or this pcb is just not compatible with my drive?

Does someone have an exact pcb donor for my drive?

Re: HDDZone bad Hitachi 0A90302 pcb selling??

November 7th, 2013, 22:47

Were you able to confirm that the PCB was good upon arrival?

Also, from your posts in general I get the sense you have the ability to save NV-RAM. Did you save the donor PCB's NV-RAM prior to soldering? If yes, maybe can compare current NV-RAM content with original content, or even your donor's content for reference. Any inconsistencies?

I have not yet come across this model with a bad PCB. Most had bad heads and often media damage.

Re: HDDZone bad Hitachi 0A90302 pcb selling??

November 8th, 2013, 3:05

labtech wrote:Were you able to confirm that the PCB was good upon arrival?

Also, from your posts in general I get the sense you have the ability to save NV-RAM. Did you save the donor PCB's NV-RAM prior to soldering? If yes, maybe can compare current NV-RAM content with original content, or even your donor's content for reference. Any inconsistencies?

I have not yet come across this model with a bad PCB. Most had bad heads and often media damage.


Agree, never seen this particular model with bad PCB causing clicking.

More often or not, it's a bad head in there.

If you have UDMA you can disable all heads in NVRAM except the primary one and see what occurs. If you get ID then re-enable others one-by-one :-)

Good luck!

Re: HDDZone bad Hitachi 0A90302 pcb selling??

November 8th, 2013, 7:30

On the original pcb i found an open fuse and shorted diode, so i'm sure something is wrong on my pcb, but i think also that donor pcb from hddzone is even worse (but i can't find any damaged component, maybe is the VCM controller? ).
I tried the donor pcb before nvram swap, the drive never spinned with this pcb. :twisted:

Unfurtunally my eprom is not compatible with this nvram chip, so i can't do a dump.
My eprom works at 3,3V, NVRAM at 1,8V, so if i use my eprom it would burn it.

P.S.
I want to get Hitachi doctor from SD, maybe with that i will be able to see what's wrong and would be able to disable heads.

Re: HDDZone bad Hitachi 0A90302 pcb selling??

November 8th, 2013, 16:41

michael chiklis wrote:I want to get Hitachi doctor from SD, maybe with that i will be able to see what's wrong and would be able to disable heads.


This drive is an ARM architecture drive, which I'm not sure SD supports, so you might be wasting your money :-(

I've never bought anything from hddzone, but find it difficult to believe they'd send a duff PCB on purpose :-(
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