OCZ Vertex 2 firmware corruption

[kehall]

I bought a new Samsung TV JS9000 series and thought I'd try the HDD PVR facilities.

This TV must be doing something very strange as it has managed to corrupt the firmware of both a 16GB USB3 stick and also my OCZ Vertex2 (via USB to SATA adapter), definitely no coincidence.

I recovered the USB stick by using a manufacturing mass production tool available on the internet, but am stumped by the Vertex2 as it is not recognised by BIOS or firmware tools from OCZ...

The Vertex drive powers up, green LED on, then red LED blinks once, out and then stays on (so both LEDs are on at this point). Tried OCZ Toolbox but doesn't find anything.

I suspect I may have to connect to JTAG or something (4 solder pads exposed at rear of drive, VCC, TX, RX, GND) and somehow upload base firmware or something - no idea really, so anyone here got any clues?

Maybe it is still accessible in some way via SATA but doesn't feel that way to me.

Kind regards,

Keith.

[HaQue]

Hi Keith, I would be sending it in for RMA. If OCZ toolbox doesn't find it, it is a good candidate for a new drive. Highly doubt you can fix it. And even if you did, I would never trust it. If you have files you need off it, that's a different story.

[kehall]

Thanks, I would but not sure it is worth the cost to RMA or even if under warranty now, so this is more an exercise in seeing what can be done here.

If that learning = do nothing and throw it away then so be it, but strikes me as odd if a consumer device can so easily screw the firmware that there isn't also a reasonable expectation to be able to reprogram the essential bootloader or whatever is required to get the firmware back on it.

e.g. I've not tried any low level DOS utilities even if they are available, and I feel pretty sure that OCZ toolbox is just looking for a working drive rather than looking a bit deeper.

K

[HaQue]

Yes the warranty road is not really worth it at time with drives, I agree. The thing is not so much if something can be done, it is more if someone knows or will tell you. Working on SSD's is in its infancy, and there are a huge number of different models. DR people get exposed to many different ones, though many customers decline the quote. There are no service manuals from the vendor, not many hard drive tools have much support in the SATA side, and firmware / NAND reading / jtag etc is hit and miss because of wildly different support for the NAND chips, different controllers have different ease of recovery, and many are not yet reverse engineered.

what is the exact model number.. or controller number inside?

As far as the TV goes with killing drives, I can say this is possible. I have a friend who got me to look at his brand new 1tb Seagate external. Used it on the tv for a week, and it died. The next drive, a WD 1TB also died within a week. I loaned him an old 200GB WD external, and this too died in a few week. all drives were not detectable after pulling from their cases.

If the controller is SandForce, then it is beyond repair I believe. Other controllers, don't know, but most customers want data recovered, and some are possible. But fixing, I wouldn't like the chances

[kehall]

Thanks HaQue, it's a OCZSSD2-2VTX120G (and I think is sandforce) so probably only worth £20 or so if that, but feels annoying to just be a few programmable bits between living and dead, not like its got a catastrophic failure and all the NAND is on fire

But I equally can appreciate that these are probably initially programmed in bulk during manufacturing and no-one else has that capability..

However made this post on the off-chance that someone may be able to assist (I did just see a post here suggesting there may be some options but not publicly disclosed!) viewtopic.php?f=10&t=32445&p=225551&hilit=vertex+2#p225551

[pcimage]

I also think there's something odd going on with these TV's.

A while ago we had two almost identical WD USB drives in, one belonging to the client and the other to here next door neighbour. Apparently she plugged her drive into her TV and it died (still spinning but not recognisable, even with pc3000) and so she borrowed her next door neighbours drive to test, and the TV killed that one too.

Never did get to the bottom of it as they didn't want to spend any money on the recoveries and wanted the drives back for RMA.

[HaQue]

I am not sure if serial output would help, but would be interesting to see. Do you think you could hook up a USB-Serial adapter on it? Easy enough, http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/USB-2-0-to-TTL-UART-6PIN-Module-Serial-Converter-CP2102-STC-Module-New-Arrival/201409782440?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20140122125356%26meid%3D65903283da0144c2ae7fe99ac05ed16a%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D230822820671

just hook
GND---GND
TX---RX
RX---TX

Use putty or hyperterminal, or whatever. If you need help on it just ask.

also maybe look with magnifying glass for any blown components especially resistors.


not sure what else to suggest unfortunately