Samsung SP1624N recovery...

[Mjasnik]

Hi!

This is my first post here. I could not really find a conclusive enough solution to my problem, so I'll try to ask.
As for myself, I'm experienced in computers, soldered motherboard/video card parts and have been completing computers (as an amateur of course) since 199x, recovering IBM ThinkPad passwords by building/soldering specific parts to tiny MB chips and reading pwds through that via COM ports. So I'm nowhere near newbie in anything related to computers/parts.

As for the problem. I have SP1624N 160Gb Samsung HDD with PCB of version BF41-00102A (unbolted PCB from HDD, version is on the side that is not visible), revision on the front is P80A 2M rev 03.
I have had this HDD for a while and couple of years ago it just died, I thought that I had copied all info off the HDD onto my RAID setup, but apparently smth is missing, so I need to recover it, not badly but well, you know...

Symptoms are quite interesting, I think that the problem is really the PCB, because when I start up the computer HDD spins up, I can feel it and spin sound seems to be fine, then after spin-up HDD tries to do smth with heads, it's ticking exactly 6 times and then it spins down. In BIOS - nothing at all, the big "ARM" Samsung chip gets quite hot, the rest of PCB seems to be fine. HDD was not physically damaged, at the time of fail it was acting as home-brew server data storage, I think system stopped responding properly and then after restart it failed.

The questions are: is my thinking correct for this kind of issue? Can I use BF41-00103A P80A 8M Rev 03 PCB for my case? I could not really find the disk or PCB exactly the same. If someone has compatible PCB, I can buy it (of course if the price is not crazy).

bing thanks
Mjasnik

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[Mjasnik]

Hi again!

Out of curiosity I attached this HDD to another computer, first was all intel based (nothing worked), this one is all AMD based. Guess what, on this computer disk is identified, even all modes are displayed correctly in BIOS. Disk does not make any strange noises and is spinning all the time.
The problem on this computer is when OS (in this case it's linux) tries to do smth with the disk like scans for partitions or so (dunno exactly what it's doing this early at boot time), it clicks + shows error, then the same again it freezes.

So this is quite different experience, but nevertheless somehow I think the issue is PCB (or maybe some internal voice tells me to do everything non-destructive myself before trying to consider spending more $$$ ).

Will search google for some error codes.

Maybe this is important, but: BIOS says it can't read SMART at all, so I had to disable it.

regards
Mjasnik

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[Mjasnik]

Hi!

Ok, resume: it seems that HDD can't read the disk at all, at startup it reports that it suppotts SMART, but that data can't be read by computer BIOS.
When OS boots, it tries to read data which gives "invalid argument" + IDNF error, which is strange, because that means that command is not correct or sector is not found.
These errors, as far as I found, are read errors which basically means it can't read anything off the disk.
So either heads controler or anything related to it is gone or heads themselves are kaput.

Any suggestions on replacement board? Are these errors possibly PCB or they sound like HW itself is bad?

regards
Mjasnik

[pcimage]

Doubtful to be PCB issue, more possible to be a firmware problem.

Search connecting to serial output and see what that tells you!

[hhddrec]

I doubt about PCB fails.

Maybe FW problems or only bad secs

try with DDrescue, if not most probable FW issue.