WD5000AAVS PM2 (PUIS) ACTIVATED, UNABLE TO REVERT

[masterat0r]

Hi guys. Sorry for slamming this into you even this is my first post, but i had enough with the WD SUPPORT and HDAT technical staff. I wrote it so many times that I don't know how to put it in a different manner so that someone may help me. I made a mistake by enabling PM2 on both a Hitachi and a WD drive. Ofcourse as you may know, my drives became undetectable until I used that compiled iso with linux set of commands (turn_off_poweron_in_standby-1.01.iso). Hitachi drive is ok now but the damn WD one still needs booting with this iso. So it's a WD bug. They won't provide a fix, telling me so many crap you won't believe it how low they go to exculpate themselves. I haven't been able to find a firmware or a second hand PCB for this model. Is there any affordable fix for this issue? Thank you kindly.

WDC WD5000AAVS-00ZTB0 (WD-WCASU2815745)

[BlackST]

pcb swap is useless, fw update *maybe* but risky. I would rma it if possible. With pro gear it is possible to fix it.

[masterat0r]

Yeah, I found others topics in here mentioning something about the microcode embedded in my original PCB. RMA is out of the question since the drive came out of warrany a couple of months after I did the stupid thing. I thought rewriting the firmware would do the trick but there is nowhere I could find. And what's most annoying is that the drive is perfect once it is recognized by the operating system. Me and my "let's polute less" principle got me here!!! PRO GEAR means a load of money. Since I'm able to retrieve data from it, that's out of the question. I just want to use it normally without the iso booting. It may selfish, childish, but no more WD for me and I'll try to persuade others. My first hdd was a 400Mb WD drive back in 99 but this filled my cup

[BlackST]

Then ask the nearest pro having the mentioned pro gear to reconfigure the drive. It's a little work and little-little-little expense...

[masterat0r]

If it's so little-little work, am I not able to do the trick by myself? Or is it something related to PC-3000 gizmo I've been hearing around?! Pardon me for saying, but wouldn't it be better if hard drives producers might actually help the user by providing these fixes as the optical drives producers do ? I know it was my bad enabling that option, but I only wanted to prolongue the life span of the device.HDAT has a guilt just as big as WD staff have.In the version I used there was no refering to the WD bug. Thanks for patience. I guess this is not the place where I can find assistance.

[BlackST]

PC3000 is a 10'000$ "gizmo" ... quite expensive.

With it, assuming you know what to do, it's easy to access FW and make the changes you need.
I don't know if there are other ways to modify that specific configuration you altered, I stick on low level access . I can't give you any command syntax or explanation as 1) you can damage the drive 2) there are specific issues about proprietary info.
There's one hope, but you have to search yourself : as it is a "standard" feature, it is possible that some "free" stuff can configure/reconfigure the PUIS option correctly.

P.S. you wanted to extend the life of the HDD , but remember that start and in some way stop of the disk are the most critical steps.... if start and stop count is more than motor run time, probably it's not a good idea. Everything depends on application.

[guru]

Yes I have noticed this problem too on a few models.

http://www.hdat2.com/hdat2_faq.html#q17

[masterat0r]

It's obvious you know a lot but you are not going to give it freely. I really don't know what so-called free stuff I did not use. I tried CrystalDiskInfo, HDsentinel, MHDD and neither of these softwares were able to revert the option. I only heard about PC3000 and I think it's so over-rated that only PROS should dare to perform with it, so that mortals would pay them real money. I did find "something" wich I guess is pretty much the same. Take a look in here http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=ro&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fitem.taobao.com%2Fitem.htm%3Fid%3D4869263636
I only need a hint not a "brambleberry in the mouth" as we romanians say
Thank you

[Dave48838]

Ya know, this is really funny. These guys do know a lot, look through any forum on this website, they know a lot. From my experience and what I see, If your willing to even attempt to work with them, they will give you just about anything in their heads to solve any diy problem. Read in any forum, if the original poster is sincerely looking for help, they get it.

Software and cheap multi meters can only do so much for a drive and then you need the big boys toys to finish the job. The big boys pay big bucks for their toys. Consider what their doing for you and every first time visitor here a gift.

P.S. $1150 will get you a bunch of this :

第2代卡的改进地方:
1:重新设计的pcb电路图,使版面更加紧凑,布局清晰.

2:ATA1口使用了质量比较好的40针硬盘座.(原来的双排针ata1口容易氧化,接触不良)

3:切换采用了电子开关设计,速度快,稳定度佳等有点
(再也看不到原来的是机械大继电器,切换速度比较慢和讨厌的滴答声了)

and that doesn't include customer service, updates, assistance from this forum or anything.

even when the big boys do pay 10,000 for this, 5,000 for that 3,000 for the other thing, this doesn't include the experience, trial and error or the know how that the big boys have gone through to learn/know a lot.

you don't know what you don't know, that's why you pay someone who does know what you don't know to do what you don't know how to do so it can get done.

if you don't want to pay them, go buy a $100 external drive and use it faithfully and you won't need to pay a pro $800+ for their services.

Best of luck

It's obvious you know a lot but you are not going to give it freely. I really don't know what so-called free stuff I did not use. I tried CrystalDiskInfo, HDsentinel, MHDD and neither of these softwares were able to revert the option. I only heard about PC3000 and I think it's so over-rated that only PROS should dare to perform with it, so that mortals would pay them real money. I did find "something" wich I guess is pretty much the same. Take a look in here http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=ro&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fitem.taobao.com%2Fitem.htm%3Fid%3D4869263636
I only need a hint not a "brambleberry in the mouth" as we romanians say
Thank you

[masterat0r]

Actually those are not dollars. As the first currency convertor says, 1150 chinese yuans are about 176 USD. You said a lot of things that did not help a bit. I'm a professional myself but in a different science. It's called geodesis/cadastre but that's not the point. I have my fees and if a customer wants the job done, he pays. But sometime, when there's a simple, independent of knowledge problem and I think the customer can do it by himself, I'm giving the advice freely, counseling the best I can. I only assumed this is a simple procedure since my device is not faulty regarding the data accessibility. If only a PRO and nothing but a PRO that charges for this operation will get this fixed, than things will remain unchanged. I'll live with that.
Good luck to the real forensic data recoverers

[dick]

And actually that is the chinese pirate copy of the old Ace pc3000 pci from about five years ago. Even if you had it in your possesion it would just be a waste of money as it won't support your modern drive.
ps. The current pc3000 udma version would cost about 5000 euros not yuan! And more if you purchased Dataextractor as well.

[BlackST]

And actually it is a few EUR fix but you have to take the drive to a pro.

[jono-ats]

Buna ziwa,

There are a lot of things I would like to know about specific aspects of hard drive technology, that would make my job simpler. But as BlackST noted, many of these things are covered by NDAs, and the manufacturers will not reveal them. So that probably rules out "secret" commands that some might share for free.

So now you will need to find someone with the appropriate gear and experience. You may convince them to do it "for free", or perhaps for trade (a big box of bad hard drives?) , or maybe some nominal fee.

Other than that -- (please forgive my very rudimentary understanding of Romanian colloquialisms and poor transliteration) your efforts will be as "oye la laba".

Best of luck in your endeavor.

[N.C.]

pcb swap is useless, fw update *maybe* but risky. I would rma it if possible. With pro gear it is possible to fix it.

Partially disagree, PUIS is stored on the PCB's ROM/EEPROM/FLASH.

Janos

[BlackST]

Janos , if you do a straight pcb swap you fix PUIS but drive doesn't work (because of differences), fw update is not sure to work, pro stuff works. You know...

[fzabkar]

pcb swap is useless, fw update *maybe* but risky. I would rma it if possible. With pro gear it is possible to fix it.

Partially disagree, PUIS is stored on the PCB's ROM/EEPROM/FLASH. ;)

Janos

Exactly, which means that "pro" gear isn't necessary. You just need a relatively cheap flash programmer/reader to read the EEPROM of a working drive, then enable PUIS and read it again. I expect that the differences will be in the PUIS flag and the checksum. Using this information it should be easy to flip the PUIS flag in the "faulty" drive and adjust its checksum accordingly.

[BlackST]

On WD 5000 AAVS PM2? Really ? Modify rom, know how to recalculate checksum AND make it work ? Easier to say than do... Usually this thing done recklessly ends with a not spinning drive

[fzabkar]

Yes, really.

Assuming there's a serial flash chip at U12, then there's no problem. Any cheap programmer will be able to read the chip. That's your backup. Recalculating the checksum should be easy, if it's anything like those that I've done on numerous occasions in the past. I suspect that it's probably no more sophisticated that a simple sum over the ROM contents, either modulo 0x100 or 0x10000. Otherwise, the words could be byte-swapped, as in the case of some Samsung firmware, or there could be a header which isn't included in the calculation, or there could be a special checksum code such as 0x55AA, but these variations are trivial to determine. Been there, done that.

[thatdellguy]

Maybe thats a great question to ask the author of this post. Assumptions can be dangerous.

[masterat0r]

Never ment to start a polemic like that . That's kinda gibberish to me. I'm not a pc newbie but that's some "cuisine" stuff right there. Checksums and eeproms are not my thing. I'm most likely to do more harm to the disk than it's actual state. My first thought was that there might be something just like that iso I mentioned earlier, or a standalone application since the thing happened to others too but I guess that's all it can be given for free. Thank you for not letting me talk all by myself and maybe the fix will sometime pop-up if not for me than for all the peeps who got *beep*ed by WD technical support.
P.S. : Is HDDL application a more elaborated MHDD tool?