HDD GURU FORUMS

Hello all,

Does anyone have the firmware modules for the following drive, so that I can re-flash it with my PC-3000.

Hitachi Deskstar Model: HDS721050CLA362 MLC: JPT39C P/N: 0F10381 0F10381JPT39C0C03 F/W: 39C
The PCB has the code: 0A72944 BA3321B MA0009 982V on the QR Sticker.

I've had a look on the files list here, but couldn't find it.

Many thanks,

Mark

What is wrong with the drive?

Hello,

I have 2 Hitachi hard drives, both with a similar problem. They power up, but I have the click of death on both of them. The SA area isn't been read, so they do not show on my Deepspar FDI, PC3000 or TD1.

I have attached it to my Atola Insight, and after it Auto Diagnostic it says there is a problem with the 5V consumption. I have tested the TVR Diodes, but they are both transmitting 12 & 5V as they should.

I wanted the firmware so I could attach the PCB to my PC3000 and reflash it to see if it fixes it.

If this doesn't work, I was going to try and find donor drives.

Can you offer any help/advice?

Many thanks,

Mark

Out of curiosity : with all the gizmos you have at hand I am sure you can perform "just a little bit" more accurate diagnose, isn't it ?

hi,
i think it's better if you read ACE's manuals, you are asking for firmware modules to reflash the PCB content

I wanted the firmware so I could attach the PCB to my PC3000 and reflash it to see if it fixes it

may be you're missing some infos about firmware structure
bye
Luca

Hello,

I figured I'd try flashing the firmware, NVRAM and ROM on the PCB with the files from a working drive to see if it fixed the issue.

If that doesn't, then I will source donor drives, though I didn't want to start replacing parts until I had tried the firmware.

I was hoping someone would have backups of the files they could send me?

I routinely make backups of firmware, NVRAM and ROM from every drive I handle, but I don't have these.

Many thanks for any help recieved,

Mark

This isn't how hard drives work. Try it with a couple of working but non-important Hitachi drives and see what happens...

(make sure you don't care if they stop working)

Im pretty sure PC3000 does not have support yet for CLA anyway.

You own PC3000, but do not understand the basic concepts of HDD firmware?

This is scary!

Hello,

I am fairly new to the world of data recovery. I am lucky enough to work in an office that has access to various resources. We have a PC3000, but I have had no formal training in it's usage, so I'm self-taught so far. The office has lost the manual, and the GUI isn't that great/easily understood, so please forgive my asking questions.

OK, here is what I have done with the drive so far:

Plugged drive into the Deepspar. It does not register in the attached drives list, no details show. This is the same when plugging it into the Atola. The drive sits and clicks away.

I have looked at the PCB, and there is no obvious sign of damage to any of the chips. The TVS diodes are OK and tested with a multimeter.

I have opened the drive in the clean room to see if there is any platter damage. There is no obvious sign of damage to the platter that I can see. When applying power, the head does move across the platter. I thought the head might be stuck.

I don't have a donor drive yet. Our usual process is to try and reflash the PCB with a known working version to see if this fixes it. We can't actually access the PCB to backup the firmware yet anyway.

My next step would be to source a donor drive, but my boss doesn't like spending money! I can then look at swapping the platters or the head assembly.

Am I doing OK so far? If not, would you be able to give me an idea of what I am doing wrong, and give me a correct procedure?

Many thanks for any help,

Mark

marklee wrote:Our usual process is to try and reflash the PCB with a known working version to see if this fixes it. We can't actually access the PCB to backup the firmware yet anyway.

This doesn't make any sense, and depending on the drive/brand/model ranges from pointless to destructive.

I would suggest outsourcing if the data is important. Look up pcimage, he can take care of you.

Deepspar have advised to try flashing the PCB to fix problems like this.

They advised me to take my original PCB, connect it to the PC3000 and enter the utility for the drive. Copy the NVRAM then hook up a donor PCB to the PC3000 and re-write the NVRAM i previously copied to the new board before attempting a PCB swap.

As I don't have a donor drive yet, I thought I'd ask to see if anyone had a backup of the NVRAM from this particular model of drive.

The data isn't critical, I just thought I could recover the drive by doing this.

So where am I going wrong?

Many thanks,

Mark

Ok, I think it is partially a terminology issue. Moving the NVRAM to a new PCB would be part of the correct procedure if you had a PCB failure. I don't think that is what you have with either drive. Additionally, using some other NVRAM would be almost guaranteed not to work, as it is essentially unique to the drive. This is why the drive's original NVRAM needs to be moved over.

In any case, "firmware modules" are different from "NVRAM" and you would never "reflash" the PCB on your problem drive

Sorry for the confusion, I guess I was using my terminology and not being very clear!

I have identified the NVRAM chip and was prepared to de-solder and move it across to a donor board, once I've got hold of one.

If you don't think it's a PCB failure, do you have any ideas what it might be before I start de-soldering chips and wrecking donor drives?

Thanks for your help so far,

Mark

I would recommend getting them diagnosed by a pro

Thanks for the replies so far.

I was hoping for a little professional help from the forum, so far I've been told what I'm doing wrong, but no one has actually offered assistance to correct my mistakes. I think I have been quite detailed in what I have tried, and I have been honest about being new to the business of data recovery.

It's very easy to flame the new guy, sit there and tell them they are wrong, and mock their lesser understanding of what is a very complex area of work.

However, it is also just as easy to offer correct advise, rather than hoarding knowledge and not passing it onto those you don't deem worthy.

How do you expect the community to grow if all you do is tell the n00bs that they are wrong and they should seek help from a pro?

Shame on you.

marklee wrote:
How do you expect the community to grow if all you do is tell the n00bs that they are wrong and they should seek help from a pro?

Shame on you.

It is much easier to make a bad HDD worse that it is to make it better.

Also, if you had any experience in Data Recovery you would understand just why it is so difficult to help without seeing the HDD.

If you are really serious about Data Recovery maybe you should spend more time researching and less time coming here and expecting to be spoon fed the solutions others have spent much time and money developing.

Besides, if you are happy enough to take the work from a customer the least you should do is realize when a job is bigger than you and outsource it to someone who can handle it.

Ultimately, you are risking your customers sentimental data the more you work on cases you do not understand....

well, i think here people advised you and this is a big help, i also think is very easy asking to a forum pretending pros will solve your problem ... if you lost the printed pc3000 manual you should have it on update boxes.
IMHO if yuo want to grow and become a pro your company should have to spend some moneys in tech support form ACE and donors, how can you even think to claim as data recovery company without both knowledge and spare parts?

about help, is very hard and time wasting trying to help someone who have no knowledge in this field, please, make your boss think about training before working on customer data.
Bye
Luca

Apologies I never meant to infer I worked for a data recovery company. I work for a very small government team, and the drives in question belong to us.

We have always been able to fix problem drives like this before, but these have stumped us.

We don't take work from customers, let alone their money. The office bought a PC3000 and an Atola ages ago, and they have been sat in a cupboard gathering dust until I came along and started playing with them.

As the bosses are not willing to spend much money on training it's up to me and my colleague to try and teach ourselves. I think we're doing OK so far. The previous staff here were made redundant or resigned recently, taking lots of knowledge & experience with them.

I didn't mean to offend, but it's annoying when we're trying quite hard to learn the ropes, yet when we ask questions that seem simple, we get rebuffed with advice to RTFM. We can't outsource the drives as they contain sensitive data, so it's up to us to try and fix them.

I'm sourcing donor drives now, but if that doesn't help, these drives will be shredded.

Many thanks,

Mark

If you and your guys need training on the PC3000, Acelab is offering regular training sessions these days: http://www.acelaboratory.com/training.php

I'm really not trying to be offensive, but it is honestly pretty absurd that you think you can go from "my hard drive is clicking, tell me what to do" to fixing it and recovering your data in the space of one forum thread. Would you get mad if you went to an auto forum and said "my car blew up, tell me how to fix it" and they suggested taking it to a mechanic?

If diagnosing and repairing hard drives over the internet was as easy as tapping out a couple of lines in a forum, there would be no reason for any of us to have jobs.

Best thing to do is get yourself one or more compatible donors, run tests and understand how they work. Once you are comfortable, start comparing what each healthy drive does with the faulty ones. You will figure it out. Based on what you were saying (given the corrected terminology issue), you were on the right track.

As far as spending money and not having much experience, well sorry. In this field, you have to invest a little (time and money) to make something out of nothing. This is just reality for everybody, government or not.

You might want to tell your boss to read this thread, so gets a clue about what is like and what you need to be more successful.

BTW, do you have PC3000 UDMA or PCI?