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
February 16th, 2016, 17:21
I was upgrading to an SSD drive in a system with two (I thought) identical Hitachi 400G Drives. SSD adapter rack scraped the OS drive and now it clicks and stops PC from hitting POST. So I switched the PCB on the drives not knowing that is a no-no with these types of drives. Upon returning the PCB back to my data drive, it is now inaccessible. I decided to order a new PCB and switch the NVRAM (I have SMT soldering skills). Will a NVRAM switch fix a firmware that is corrupted this way? Or does new firmware need to be written to the drive in order to fix this?
February 16th, 2016, 17:47
I'm not familiar with the details of this problem, but AIUI the NVRAM is modified when the PCBs are switched. Therefore you will only be transferring the problem to your new PCB.
If I were investigating this case, I would dump the NVRAM/ROM ICs on each of your boards. Then I would install the new board on your patient, allow its NVRAM to be corrupted, and then dump its contents again. I would then compare the before-and-after dumps. This will at least tell us where the changes were made.
February 18th, 2016, 12:51
Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. I understand from reading various posts here that SalvationData's HD Doctor for Hitachi/IBM is one possible tool which will permit recovery of the NVRAM from one of it's backed up locations. Is anyone aware of any other utilities/software to accomplish this with out the need for additional hardware? I've read that there is an A, B, and C location where the backups are stored. Anyone here have experience with this sort of thing? I don't understand why the PCB card wouldn't simply restore the correct firmware to the card when it is returned to the original working drive.
February 18th, 2016, 13:41
Because it is not designed like that. Just like most things in life, the human designs things without taking failure into account. It is simple comparison and if it is different, then no match = not accessible.
There aren't any affordable utilities. Only expensive. Have to send the drive into somebody who has the tools and try.
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