Hard drive troubles - Hitachi 180GXP bites the dust. Assitance is requested.

[imported_Phil]

I think my head just exploded.

 

[piroroadkill]

 

[Jeff7]

aCeaLe - I tried that thing. It insists that the drive is not an IBM drive, so it won't even try anything; same with IBM's own Drive Fitness Test. I hate programs that might be useful, but are disabled by a simple line of programming.

With Auto Spin Disabled, the BIOS can detect the drive, but instead of seeing the brand or model number, it calls it " V2C0A66A"

I believe that that is the firmware version. According to this page, I need this firmware updater.
However, the utility simply says "Your drive does not need to be updated." And then it exits.

Anyone know any commandline arguments for the IBM Drive Fitness Test utility? Like something that tells it "Dammit, I don't care what you think, overwrite the damn firmware! "

 

[aCeaLe]

hmmm....i downloaded the hdd drive information from ibm...and in my case says:
IC35L090AVV207-0
Capacity 76.69GB
Serial Number VNVC04G3C1LP1G
Current Firmawe Version : V230 ( or O) A63A

so i have the a63a version of firmware and jeff7 you have the a66a version.... (wow what'a deduction lol)
and you try to flash with the firm updater and say that "don't need to be updated"???
according to the page of ibm says:
"The new firmware revision will be xxxxA5AA or xxxxA6AA, depending on the drive installed in the system."
so both of we have an old firmware....
i don't have the car today and rains like hell here in mar del plata (400km from buenos aires).
so i have clear the agenda =o) and i go to make some test with the firmwar and @ night i tell you whats happend...

Saludos! ( greeting)
aCe aLe

 

[aCeaLe]

another thing...you have a hitachi hd? or ibm hd?..bc i have a hitachi desktar hd with a chipset that says IBM big....
when i bought this hd ibm just sold the harddisks parts to hitachi and that's why are existing ibm 180gxp and hitachi 180gxp..

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: aCeaLe
another thing...you have a hitachi hd? or ibm hd?..bc i have a hitachi desktar hd with a chipset that says IBM big....
when i bought this hd ibm just sold the harddisks parts to hitachi and that's why are existing ibm 180gxp and hitachi 180gxp..

The label says Hitachi, but it's most likely just an IBM drive with a different label slapped on it, due to the buy-out of IBM's storage division.

 

[aCeaLe]

exactly....my hd is the same....
hmmmmmm today @ 4pm....died....again....fvck!
but i guessing a theory...th disk was hot and the chips in the logic too..so i'm guessing that the curruption of the firmware is bc the disk warms up...
if i have time tonight i try to flash again the hd and tell u the whats happend..but i probably buy a hdd cooler first..

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: aCeaLe
exactly....my hd is the same....
hmmmmmm today @ 4pm....died....again....fvck!
but i guessing a theory...th disk was hot and the chips in the logic too..so i'm guessing that the curruption of the firmware is bc the disk warms up...
if i have time tonight i try to flash again the hd and tell u the whats happend..but i probably buy a hdd cooler first..

Problem is, the hard drive coolers only cool the other side of the drive; the electronics board still will get hot. Maybe put a big fan right next to it? It still won't be as good as little heatsinks on each chip, but it'll be better than stationary air.

 

[aCeaLe]

yea.......... i'm thinking in a titan cooler + heatsink that i've buyed for my radeon 9700.....
http://www.titan-cd.com/english/cuv2ab_ld2.htm
i put the heatsink in the hd.and the cooler (with the "cool" blue led =o) i put in the mb chipset.....or.....hmmmm..i don't know....
but i think that the heatsink only isnt good....so i like to try to adapt a 80x80 cooler...just in case =o)
but first i have to revive the hd.....again.. hehe

byez!
a C e a L e

 

[Jeff7]

Up again for the heck of it.

 

[kwhite01]

aCeale's link to the Dell FTP site DOES WORK!!!!

My father-in-law has a 2 year old Dell pc, and last week the hard drive decided to die....at least thats what I thought, as the PC refused to see the drive, and it was making the "clicking" noise.

The drive is a Hitachi DeskStar 120GB unit, which I believe is a 180GXB (???). I called the Dell technical support to see if the box was under warranty but it wasn't. I explained what was happening, and even explained that it still happened with no data cable connected, just power. The techie told me to try pluging it into the IDE cable which the CD-ROM was using, incase it was a faulty cable. He obviously didn't understand my diagnosis, and couldn't have cared less about the loss of data (although to be fair, the data isn't their problem).

At first I thought the drive wasn't spinning up and possibly a head crash. He was upset at loosing his data (as surprise surprise, no backup!). I decided to open the drive (out of curiosity, as we were convinced the drive was dead). I found the drive was spinning up freely, and the heads were just constantly moving across the platters, in and out etc.

This confirmed no head crash, and so (although I'd just opened it up, which is a NO NO) the data might be recoverable.

I then proceeded to search the web and luckily came across this forum, and then this thread (BTW, my internet search in Google was "deskstar clicking"). As it was now about 2am I figured I might as well have a go, so I changed the jumper setting to no autospin and downloaded the file from the Dell FTP site (why didn't the Dell techie know about this!!!). I made the bootable floppy and connected the faulty drive and booted from the floppy.

It appeared to load the Hitachi diag software, but after about 5 seconds returned to a dos prompt.

I reset the jumpers to master and tried booting....success! The drive booted. It made a few clicks, then a scraping sound (which I thought was a crash) but it booted.

I shut it down and connected my main drive as master, and reset the faulty one to slave.

I have now managed to copy all the data off the drive and have ordered a new seagate to go in the Dell box - apart from me opening the drive up, I wouldn't trust it any more.

Incidentally, before I found this thread I contacted a DR company...they quoted GBP 490 to recover the data, which is not far of USD 1000.

Hope this gives others confidence.

Kev