Hi,

I've been asked to take a look at a Hitachi Travelstar HTS541080G9SA00 (5K100) which "stopped working". The drive spins up and the heads load with a bit of activity but the drive is not found by the bios. When the drive is attached to a "test" system (it's originally from a laptop), there are some discernible differences in post/bios setup behaviour - delays, drive activity light - so evidently when the drive is attached there is some interaction going on, but it ultimately fails to be recognised as a valid drive.

In conjunction with the head activity I'm assuming that this indicates that the board is not completely dead but I am unable to discern anything physically wrong with the board either by inspection or measurement.

I'd like to solicit the opinions of anyone experienced in repairing this model, whether there is anything else to try other than swapping the board? The board label markings are: 0A26800/DA1189A

As best as I can tell it's probably identical to the one in this thread: looking-for-hitachi-laptop-pcb-model-hts541060g9sa00-t18797.html#p126436 (including the circle drawn on the MCU!)

Thanks.

replacing the board on this model is not so simple and useless. (useless, because your PCB is probably good, and PCB have pre-programmed adaptives wich is unique for the HDA, so you can't replace it without transfering the programmed adaptives.)

The issue more likely SA and/or Head related.

If your data is important, stop playing with it, you can make only bigger problem(s), and seek for professional help....

If you can't hear any "loud" clicking from the drive, only quiet head moves, than i am 99.99% sure, i can help on this one.
At this point, your drive is surely recoverable, but i can't say this after some minute playing...

PM me if you are interested.

Janos

Hi Janos,

Thanks for your response.


Does it require more than transferring the EEPROM? If that is all that's required then that is no problem.


So if I have understood you correctly, the drive fails to identify itself to the bios because it has a head or SA problem? How bizarre. Does that prevent the use of Hitachi's diagnostic software tool or will it find the drive regardless? Are there any hardware diagnostics on this drive (diagnostic port, diagnostic LED, etc)?

Would you say that there is absolutely no point in trying a replacement board?

Janos (and others), please feel free to send me a quote or estimate and I will pass it on to the owner. She would like to be able to retrieve some data from this drive, but I think she's already baulked at the estimate she was given by a drive repair service here in Australia.

Fortunately no.
You can try it if you want, but i am 99% sure, your pcb is good.
But if the media surface have damages, this trying attempt can make it worse...



There is a diagnostic port, the SATA port.
This can accept diagnostic commands, (in more levels) but the Hitachi's diag tool ,what you can download, can't deal with this drive in this condition.
You need much deeper diagnostic tools wich is expensive.

Janos