Hi everyone,

I recently attempted a head swap on a Seagate Barracuda Green ST2000DL003. The drive had been in an external casing, and was dropped. On power up, it beeped three times - sounded like a head problem, since it would spin up, THEN beep. So I opened the casing to look after getting a donor of the same type. Upon opening the casing, the heads were all severed but had left no damage on the platters. Having performed numerous successful swaps in the past on older drives, I found a donor drive at Harddrivesforsale.com, who supplied me with an exact match (9VT166-515, firmware CC45). The donor drive worked when I got it, was recognized in windows, and registered as 1.81 TB as it should.

I swapped the heads in a clean environment, closed it up and used the original (patient) PCB board. The drive now spins up, does not beep or click, but I hear it read for one second and stop. It continues to spin, and seagate's seatools will not recognize anything at all. When this didn't work, I tried the other PCB board (from the donor) and it did the exact same thing; spins up, reads, and continues to spin.

I have read a bunch about swapping EEPROM chips from patient PCB board to the donor and using the donor, but I am having trouble finding an answer about what the EEPROM mismatch would look like symptom-wise, and if using a PCB with incorrect EEPROM would cause more damage. Some have said that a PCB issue is indicated by the drive failing to spin up at all, but I feel like this may not be the case with EEPROM incompatibility, since that has to do with mapping the platters (or so I think). If anyone can shed any light on this, I would really appreciate it! I dropped this drive as I was copying its contents to a new backup drive, which is just all kinds of ironic.

Any advice anybody would have would be great - as I hadn't done a head swap in 7 or 8 years, things have changed, despite looking similar hardware-wise! I'm beginning to see that it's not a simple hardware exchange anymore!
Thanks in advance!

Maybe the heads are incompatible. Matching the external numbers is no guarantee that the headstack will be the same or compatible.

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That's one cause.

Also, you may have some FW issue causing that.

Thanks for the reply guys, I'm a little stuck because from what I've been reading I could either swap the ROM on the PCB, or try another head stack, with no guarantee for either. Unfortunately, I recognize that I'm a part swapper and not much use when it comes to diagnosis beyond the clearly broken heads originally - I could fairly easily swap ROMs but don't want to risk adding yet another variable before knowing for sure it's that, or as jono-ats said, the HDA, or as dmarques said, the firmware.

Dmarques, what sort of firmware problems can you think of? Is it some kind of incompatibility between EEPROM? This is one area where I have literally no expertise.

The donor was the same firmware version, same hard drive part number, same location for production (WU code for, I believe, Thailand? may have been China), and within a digit or two for production date. Are there any other parameters I'm missing? I'm just curious what step other people would try from here...what do you all think?

Again, thanks for any advice you might have. I am eager to learn about this and get a little bit more up to speed on everything as I go along!

Hi,

Do you have any terminal output after head swap?

Hi there!
I have a patient drive that is the same of the first post:
ST2000DL003
P/N:9VT166-515
FW:CC45
Site Code: WU
The drive was dropped while it is powered.
I have swapped the head stack with the donor HSA. The donor drive has the same site codem fw, p/n.
The drive is now recognised, but with so many read errors. I use Atola Insight.
I post the terminal log, that is appear after i start the drive:

Rst 0x40M



MC Internal LPC Process
FAIL Op=0165 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=0055 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=0165 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=0065 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=0165 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=0055 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=0900 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=0600 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=0055 Resp=0005



(P) SATA Reset



User Data Base 00991228



MCMainPOR: Start:



Check MCMT Version: Current



MCMainPOR: Non-Init Case



MC Seg Disc and Cache Nodes: 4011A58C 4011869C



Seg Write Preamble VBM start: 000010A7 end: 000010CE



Footer - start: 000010D0 end: 000010F7



Seg Read Preamble VBM - start: 000010F9 end: 00001120



Footer - start: 00001122 end: 00001149



Reconstruction: MCMT Reconstruction Start



Max number of MC segments 22E0



Nonvolatile MCMT sequence number 00000BBA



[RSRS] 05E2



Reconstruction: Completed 0: MCMT Was Valid, HeadPtr was unwritten



[MCMTWS]



MCMainPOR: MCTBufferPtr->Header.MCStateFlagsDisc = 00000041



MCMainPOR: MCTBufferPtr->Header.MCTStateFlags = 0000002A



MCMainPOR: MCStateFlags = 00000041



MCMainPOR: Feature Enabled...
FAIL Op=0555 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=0065 Resp=0005

Could somebody please help me witch command i have to use to recalculate the translator?
Thanks!

FAIL Op=045B Resp=0005
FAIL Op=055B Resp=0005
FAIL Op=005B Resp=0005
FAIL Op=055B Resp=0007
FAIL Op=0059 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=055B Resp=0005
FAIL Op=005B Resp=0005
FAIL Op=055B Resp=0005
FAIL Op=005B Resp=0005
FAIL Op=045B Resp=0005
FAIL Op=055B Resp=0005
FAIL Op=005B Resp=0005
FAIL Op=055B Resp=0007
FAIL Op=0059 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=055B Resp=0005
FAIL Op=005B Resp=0005
FAIL Op=055B Resp=0007
FAIL Op=0059 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=055B Resp=0005
FAIL Op=005B Resp=0005
FAIL Op=055B Resp=0007
FAIL Op=0059 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=055B Resp=0005
FAIL Op=005B Resp=0005
FAIL Op=055B Resp=0005
FAIL Op=005B Resp=0005
FAIL Op=0555 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=0065 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=0600 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=0065 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=0555 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=0065 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=0600 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=0065 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=0555 Resp=0005
FAIL Op=0065 Resp=0005...
.....and more