Hi,

I have two Samsung 1 TB Momentus-B series, Model ST1000LM024, one with head problem and another which could possibly serve as donor.

Those drives have two P/N : "HDD P/N" and another P/N located on a small sticker below the main one.

Patient
Donor?
What about the second part of the "HDD P/N" (eg. AV1) ?

Does matching the "HDD P/N" suffice or should one match some blocks of the detailed P/N too?

Thanks.

Thank you jermy,

I knew the link you mentioned, but it doesn't answer my questions.

According to Donor Drive's head swap matching guide, you have to match 3 criteria for Samsung's newer drives :
1) Model (that is the case)
2) Heads map
3) Preamplificator

Well, these are quite general requirements, not only for Samsung.

The fact is that Donor Drive's suggests getting the heads map and preamplification using a PC-3000 card or equivalent.

I'm however almost certain, that these informations are "encoded" inside the information printed on the stickers.
P/N can mean "product number", but also "parts number".

I'm looking for some similar "sticker reverse engineering" as what has been done for Toshiba 2.5'' hard drives here:
https://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=32197

The drive is a Samsung's Momentus M8 series.

So, to summarize, my questions are :

a) What does the 1st block of the "HDD P/N" encode? eg. HN-M101MBB
b) What does the 2nd block of the "HDD P/N" encode? eg. HN-M101MBB
c) What does the 3rd optional block of the "HDD P/N" encode? (eg. HN-M101MBB/AV-1

d) What does the 1st block of the bottom P/N encode ? eg. E1653-G14-AZAFF
e) What does the 2nd block of the bottom P/N encode ? eg. E1653-G14-AZAFF
f) What does the 3rd block of the bottom P/N encode ? eg. E1653-G14-AZAFF

Thanks.

SOSdonnees,

Yes , there is something with Samsung drives

we need to clear the head stack compatibility rule ..

i will follow your post please if you find good info post it here

thanks

With Seagate actually manufacturing these drives for Samsung, I'm wondering if we should also be looking at the first three digits of the Serial number. Has anyone ever looked to see if there's a correlation of the first three in the serial number?

I'm pretty sure the part after the / is a region specific code likely relating to the firmware. For example I notice the /JP1 is mostly found in Asia, so I'm assuming that JP = Japan. Whereas /AV1 is what's most common in the Americas. Perhaps it's just a coincidence.

_________________
Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

Head compatibility with ST1000LM024 is quite easy when you've got a pile of donors to pick from.

An incompatible preamp will not spin up, so place the PCB from the patient drive onto the donor in question. If it spins up, the heads will be compatible. If not, then they're not.

You can confirm this by looking at the terminal output, incompatible heads will spit out a preamp error.

I don't have info on how to establish this just by looking at the label though, but matching the date as close as possible is a good way of narrowing it down.

_________________
Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town

Very interesting, Nick.

_________________
http://www.datasaversllc.com

Thanks jono-ats and nick_ct

this is correct.

_________________
Data Recovery Pakistan

Samsung drives for HSA exchange compatibility you need donor drive with:
Matching model number example: ST1000LM024 , or USB drive with model number ST1000LM014 is same as ST1000LM024 inside.
Matching second part of part number, example G84A, G14A, G141, G841. The third character represents numbers of heads.
Closest manufacturing date for safety sake.

matching second or first off part number ? its not clear for me
thanks

Hi , saltwater,

Thanks

this is what we look for

Well,
In India We Have Many JP1,AV1 Etc ,So Possibly your observation is not so correct

_________________
Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

BTW ,
Nick And Saltwater Thank You both of you ,Very interesting and eye opening observation from both of you ,Everyday seems to be a new learning day for me ,But in 1TB i have never seen less then 4 heads in this series .I Get Many of these and i just love em

_________________
Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

Today my theory as "matching second part of part number, example G84A, G14A, G141, G841" has been failed.
I have changed HSA from patient ST500LM014 drive, P/N: F8342-G92A-A11SU PCB Date:20150802 with
Donor ST500LM012 drive, P/N:F6442-G92A-B3NN3, PCB Date:20150808.

After a head swap, patient send a "Preamp Error" message by terminal. Off course the donor drive after HSA changed back still works fine.
BUT!
I realise something! Matching second part of part number, example G84A, G14A, G141, G841 does not matter!!

After you start a Samsung drive, before it spins up checks HSA preamp revision ID.
It looks like this:


So you have to pass "PA VID", "PN", "Rev", and "PAUNI" number
Closest manufacturing date
....and same head map

Nick_CT has the answer.

Wow, this nice topics. Thanks for the informative post.

This is good info. we also have our own way to identify donor

_________________
__________
There is no substitute for education and experience
THANK YOU
SHAHI
shahi.mahbub@gmail.com