IBM DHAA-2540 laptop hard drive common failure modes

My old laptop hard drive failed, and I was hoping that this would
be a good place to ask what I should look for on the IBM DHAA-2540
540 MB hard drive. I have removed the drive from its caddy, and
the board doesn't have any visible scorched components. The
computer just stopped recognizing the presence of the drive.

Can anyone suggest places to put my meter probes, in order of
descending likelyhood of being shot?

Thanks.

Tech Wannabe.

 

[Jeroni Paul]

Try to reseat all plugs first. Then apply power and carefully listen to the drive noises, does the disk spin as usual and does the head sound like it is attempting to read something repeatedly? Also trace the power rails on the board, you may find fuses and voltage regulators.
Do not open the disk cover as dust particles will ruin it.

 

If the drive sounds like it is spinning up and otherwie normal, then the problem is likely either the controller board on the drive is smoked or the controller on the motherboard is toast.

If you can acquire another drive of the same make and model, carefully exchange the PC boards. If the controller itself was bad, this may resolve the problem. I have successfully done this in the past to salvage data off of a "dead" drive.

Dan

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

dansabrservices@yahoo.com wrote:

If the drive sounds like it is spinning up and otherwie normal, then the problem is likely either the controller board on the drive is smoked or the controller on the motherboard is toast.

If you can acquire another drive of the same make and model, carefully exchange the PC boards. If the controller itself was bad, this may resolve the problem. I have successfully done this in the past to salvage data off of a "dead" drive.

That used to work, but the bad sector map and other information is
stored in the flash memory on newer drives. He doesn't say if this is
IDE or SATA or the size. I'm not going to look it up.

--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

 

On Mon, 28 Jul 2014 23:36:39 +0000 (UTC),
kpgpbhdw@kpgpbhdw.com <kpgpbhdw@kpgpbhdw.com> wrote:

My old laptop hard drive failed, and I was hoping that this would
be a good place to ask what I should look for on the IBM DHAA-2540
540 MB hard drive. I have removed the drive from its caddy, and
the board doesn't have any visible scorched components. The
computer just stopped recognizing the presence of the drive.

Can anyone suggest places to put my meter probes, in order of
descending likelyhood of being shot?

Thanks.

Tech Wannabe.

Drive is EIDE/PATA, 540 MB. A new drive would cost more than
to buy another laptop at a rummage sale. The drive is so quiet
that I can't tell if it is spinning. I have pulled and re-installed
the drive. There is only one connector to the computer, and it seems
fine. The hardware settings tool built in to the computer (Thinkpad
770E) says there is no drive installed.

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

kpgpbhdw@kpgpbhdw.com wrote:

Drive is EIDE/PATA, 540 MB. A new drive would cost more than
to buy another laptop at a rummage sale. The drive is so quiet
that I can't tell if it is spinning. I have pulled and re-installed
the drive. There is only one connector to the computer, and it seems
fine. The hardware settings tool built in to the computer (Thinkpad
770E) says there is no drive installed.

How old is that laptop? It looks like Win95 era.




--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

 

That used to work, but the bad sector map and other information is

stored in the flash memory on newer drives. He doesn't say if this is

IDE or SATA or the size. I'm not going to look it up.

I agree and would not expect to "use" the drive for any extended amount of time. I have successfully recovered the drive contents this way however, even with modern drives.

Dan

 

The last one I did was 250GB I think. Realize that I only recovered files over a single attempt. This was not a full disk recovery. Only files from a few folders were retrieved. I can't say whether or not this would work on any given rive, but it did work for me in this instance. YMMV.

Dan

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

dansabrservices@yahoo.com wrote:

That used to work, but the bad sector map and other information is

stored in the flash memory on newer drives. He doesn't say if this is

IDE or SATA or the size. I'm not going to look it up.


I agree and would not expect to "use" the drive for any extended amount of time. I have successfully recovered the drive contents this way however, even with modern drives.

How large were they?


--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

 

[jfeng@my-deja.com]

On Tuesday, July 29, 2014 7:25:52 PM UTC-7, kpgp...@kpgpbhdw.com wrote:

Drive is EIDE/PATA, 540 MB. A new drive would cost more than
to buy another laptop at a rummage sale. The drive is so quiet
that I can't tell if it is spinning. I have pulled and re-installed
the drive. There is only one connector to the computer, and it seems
fine. The hardware settings tool built in to the computer (Thinkpad
770E) says there is no drive installed.
Can you manipulate the drive while it is attached to your laptop? If if you can feel the gyroscopic torque while you move it, the spindle motor is probably running. If the actuator is seeking, you should be able to hear it with a stethoscope. If you are determined to get this computer going again, you can find lots of cheap (under $10) IDE laptop drives in eBay (larger capacity drives will probably work, but your computer may not recognize anything above 2GB).

 

On Wed, 30 Jul 2014 01:51:47 -0400,
Michael A. Terrell <mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:

kpgpbhdw@kpgpbhdw.com wrote:

Drive is EIDE/PATA, 540 MB. A new drive would cost more than
to buy another laptop at a rummage sale. The drive is so quiet
that I can't tell if it is spinning. I have pulled and re-installed
the drive. There is only one connector to the computer, and it seems
fine. The hardware settings tool built in to the computer (Thinkpad
770E) says there is no drive installed.


How old is that laptop? It looks like Win95 era.

I would guess it's from the early '90s. If it ever ran Win95,
it probably ran it pretty slowly.

 

On Thu, 31 Jul 2014 07:22:31 -0700 (PDT),
jfeng@my-deja.com <jfeng@my-deja.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, July 29, 2014 7:25:52 PM UTC-7, kpgp...@kpgpbhdw.com wrote:

Drive is EIDE/PATA, 540 MB. A new drive would cost more than
to buy another laptop at a rummage sale. The drive is so quiet
that I can't tell if it is spinning. I have pulled and re-installed
the drive. There is only one connector to the computer, and it seems
fine. The hardware settings tool built in to the computer (Thinkpad
770E) says there is no drive installed.
Can you manipulate the drive while it is attached to your laptop? If if
you can feel the gyroscopic torque while you move it, the spindle motor
is probably running. If the actuator is seeking, you should be able to
hear it with a stethoscope. If you are determined to get this computer
going again, you can find lots of cheap (under $10) IDE laptop drives in
eBay (larger capacity drives will probably work, but your computer may
not recognize anything above 2GB).

When the drive is installed, it is nestled into the computer so that I
can't get at it. No cable, just a caddy. I might try listening to it
with the keyboard folded up, but there is a microswitch that I would
have to hold down. I am not that determined, since I have other
computers that I could use. It's just that this one is the only one
that I have without Windows on it, and I like to use it with DOS to
do some electronics experiments. I tried a 5.5 GB drive in its place,
but the computer wouldn't even boot with that inside. A replacement
drive under 2 GB might be hard to find. I saw some on Ebay for over
$30, and that is too much to spend on this old thing.

 

kpgpbhdw@kpgpbhdw.com wrote:

It's just that this one is the only one that I have without Windows on
it, and I like to use it with DOS to do some electronics experiments.

DOSbox is a pretty good DOS emulator that runs under modern Windows. I
don't know how good it is with programs that directly access the serial
or parallel port, though, which might be important for your use. You
can download DOSbox (open source) at
http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1 .

I have taken a bootable DOS floppy and turned it into a bootable CD-R
before, so I could flash the BIOS on a machine without a working floppy
drive. I don't know if anybody has ever made a bootable CD of full DOS,
or if that's possible. You wouldn't have any persistent storage,
though, unless you used a floppy disk, maybe a USB stick, an old
parallel-port Iomega ZIP drive, or similar.

I tried a 5.5 GB drive in its place, but the computer wouldn't even
boot with that inside. A replacement drive under 2 GB might be hard
to find.

One of the modes of a classic CompactFlash card is to emulate an IDE
interface. I don't remember if you need some "smarts" to put it in
this mode (like a microcontroller that loads some configuration data
into the CF card at startup) or if it's as simple as grounding or not
grounding a pin on the CF interface. You do need an adapter to go
from the CF connector to an IDE connector. I know you can get one that
goes from CF to 40-pin IDE (what a 3.5" hard drive would use) that would
fit in a 3.5" drive bay; you might be able to find one that would fit in
the space of a 2.5" drive. In a quick Google, I see new 1 GB CF cards
for $21 and 512 MB for $14 for decent brands. If you know somebody
who's been into digital cameras for a long time, they may have an old
CF card that they'll give you or sell cheap.

Alternatively, if there is a local e-waste recycling place, you might
check to see if they sell (or give away) any parts. One of the ones
near me fixes recent computers to resell, and also sells used parts
cheap. Since 540 MB drives probably default to "recycle imeediately"
these days, you might have to tell them what you want, wait a few weeks
for some loads of stuff to process through, and then go and see what
they've found.

Matt Roberds

 

On Thu, 31 Jul 2014 18:47:20 +0000 (UTC),
kpgpbhdw@kpgpbhdw.com <kpgpbhdw@kpgpbhdw.com> wrote:

On Thu, 31 Jul 2014 07:22:31 -0700 (PDT),
jfeng@my-deja.com <jfeng@my-deja.com> wrote:
On Tuesday, July 29, 2014 7:25:52 PM UTC-7, kpgp...@kpgpbhdw.com wrote:

Drive is EIDE/PATA, 540 MB. A new drive would cost more than
to buy another laptop at a rummage sale. The drive is so quiet
that I can't tell if it is spinning. I have pulled and re-installed
the drive. There is only one connector to the computer, and it seems
fine. The hardware settings tool built in to the computer (Thinkpad
770E) says there is no drive installed.
Can you manipulate the drive while it is attached to your laptop? If if
you can feel the gyroscopic torque while you move it, the spindle motor
is probably running. If the actuator is seeking, you should be able to
hear it with a stethoscope. If you are determined to get this computer
going again, you can find lots of cheap (under $10) IDE laptop drives in
eBay (larger capacity drives will probably work, but your computer may
not recognize anything above 2GB).

When the drive is installed, it is nestled into the computer so that I
can't get at it. No cable, just a caddy. I might try listening to it
with the keyboard folded up, but there is a microswitch that I would
have to hold down. I am not that determined, since I have other
computers that I could use. It's just that this one is the only one
that I have without Windows on it, and I like to use it with DOS to
do some electronics experiments. I tried a 5.5 GB drive in its place,
but the computer wouldn't even boot with that inside. A replacement
drive under 2 GB might be hard to find. I saw some on Ebay for over
$30, and that is too much to spend on this old thing.

I just figured out how to run the drive without the computer being
completely assembled. It does spin up, but still is not recognized
by the computer.

I now can check the controller board with the computer powered up.
What test points should I examine?

 

On Thu, 31 Jul 2014 21:58:13 +0000 (UTC),
mroberds@att.net <mroberds@att.net> wrote:

kpgpbhdw@kpgpbhdw.com wrote:
It's just that this one is the only one that I have without Windows on
it, and I like to use it with DOS to do some electronics experiments.

DOSbox is a pretty good DOS emulator that runs under modern Windows. I
don't know how good it is with programs that directly access the serial
or parallel port, though, which might be important for your use. You
can download DOSbox (open source) at
http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1 .

I already have dosbox installed on my linux box. I don't use it because
the old laptop is so convenient to put on the work bench and connect
whatever I'm working on to one of the ports. Also, DOS will let me
play with the ports directly, whereas linux and windows get in the way.

I have taken a bootable DOS floppy and turned it into a bootable CD-R
before, so I could flash the BIOS on a machine without a working floppy
drive. I don't know if anybody has ever made a bootable CD of full DOS,
or if that's possible. You wouldn't have any persistent storage,
though, unless you used a floppy disk, maybe a USB stick, an old
parallel-port Iomega ZIP drive, or similar.

This laptop doesn't have any CD drive or USB/Flash ports.

I tried a 5.5 GB drive in its place, but the computer wouldn't even
boot with that inside. A replacement drive under 2 GB might be hard
to find.

One of the modes of a classic CompactFlash card is to emulate an IDE
interface. I don't remember if you need some "smarts" to put it in
this mode (like a microcontroller that loads some configuration data
into the CF card at startup) or if it's as simple as grounding or not
grounding a pin on the CF interface. You do need an adapter to go
from the CF connector to an IDE connector. I know you can get one that
goes from CF to 40-pin IDE (what a 3.5" hard drive would use) that would
fit in a 3.5" drive bay; you might be able to find one that would fit in
the space of a 2.5" drive. In a quick Google, I see new 1 GB CF cards
for $21 and 512 MB for $14 for decent brands. If you know somebody
who's been into digital cameras for a long time, they may have an old
CF card that they'll give you or sell cheap.

Alternatively, if there is a local e-waste recycling place, you might
check to see if they sell (or give away) any parts. One of the ones
near me fixes recent computers to resell, and also sells used parts
cheap. Since 540 MB drives probably default to "recycle imeediately"
these days, you might have to tell them what you want, wait a few weeks
for some loads of stuff to process through, and then go and see what
they've found.

E-waste in my area has to go to the local Goodwill facility. I've asked
them about aquiring some leftovers, but was informed that that would be
against the rules. Seems that no-one there has the authority to
authorize it.

> Matt Roberds

Tech wannabe.

 

[whit3rd]

On Saturday, August 2, 2014 2:29:10 PM UTC-7, kpgp...@kpgpbhdw.com wrote:

> This laptop doesn't have any CD drive or USB/Flash ports.

Are there PCMCIA slots? You can get a variety of CF flash
cards and PCMCIA/CF adapters, so a 2GB SSD is possible, inexpensively.
Many laptops with floppy drives can unplug the floppy and add
another disk (hard drive, Zip disk, CD, DVD...).

I tried a 5.5 GB drive in its place, but the computer wouldn't even
boot with that inside. A replacement drive under 2 GB might be hard
to find.

A lot of larger drives had jumper options to reduce their apparent size,
for just such situations as yours.

If you want to talk about HARD to replace, old Macintosh laptops used 2.5" SCSI
laptop disk drives.

 

[jfeng@my-deja.com]

On Saturday, August 2, 2014 2:24:33 PM UTC-7, kpgp...@kpgpbhdw.com wrote:

I just figured out how to run the drive without the computer being
completely assembled. It does spin up, but still is not recognized
by the computer.

I now can check the controller board with the computer powered up.
What test points should I examine?
Is the actuator making noise long after the drive has been powered up? If so, I would suspect that the drive is bad. Even so, I would take my trusty IDE/SATA-to-USB adapter and see if the drive works (maybe on a different computer).

If the drive works, I would suspect your laptop. I would try unplugging and re-seating the memory chips, and I would try installing a new CMOS battery. Anything more elaborate is probably not economically wortthwhile (but it could be a fun educational experience).

 

On Sun, 3 Aug 2014 07:30:25 -0700 (PDT),
jfeng@my-deja.com <jfeng@my-deja.com> wrote:

On Saturday, August 2, 2014 2:24:33 PM UTC-7, kpgp...@kpgpbhdw.com wrote:
I just figured out how to run the drive without the computer being
completely assembled. It does spin up, but still is not recognized
by the computer.

I now can check the controller board with the computer powered up.
What test points should I examine?
Is the actuator making noise long after the drive has been powered up?
If so, I would suspect that the drive is bad. Even so, I would take
my trusty IDE/SATA-to-USB adapter and see if the drive works (maybe on
a different computer).

I couldn't hear any head movement clicks at all. I don't have any
adapters that could connect to the drive.

If the drive works, I would suspect your laptop. I would try
unplugging and re-seating the memory chips, and I would try installing a
new CMOS battery. Anything more elaborate is probably not economically
wortthwhile (but it could be a fun educational experience).

The laptop will boot from floppy and run programs just fine. Only the
hard drive is bolloxed.

 

On Sun, 3 Aug 2014 00:45:56 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, August 2, 2014 2:29:10 PM UTC-7, kpgp...@kpgpbhdw.com wrote:

This laptop doesn't have any CD drive or USB/Flash ports.

Are there PCMCIA slots? You can get a variety of CF flash
cards and PCMCIA/CF adapters, so a 2GB SSD is possible, inexpensively.

There are a couple of PCMCIA slots, but I don't have any storage
devices that will fit, and of course, I am trying not to spend any
money on this thing, as I could replace the whole unit for 10 bucks
at a rummage sale.

Many laptops with floppy drives can unplug the floppy and add
another disk (hard drive, Zip disk, CD, DVD...).

Not this one. It is from 1994. 80486 processor. Really, really old.

I tried a 5.5 GB drive in its place, but the computer wouldn't even
boot with that inside. A replacement drive under 2 GB might be hard
to find.

A lot of larger drives had jumper options to reduce their apparent size,
for just such situations as yours.

I'll have to look at the large drive I mentioned.

If you want to talk about HARD to replace, old Macintosh laptops used
2.5" SCSI laptop disk drives.

I could replace the whole drive, if I wanted to spend 50 bux on one, but
my goal in this case, is to fix the old drive.

 

[jfeng@my-deja.com]

On Sunday, August 3, 2014 5:33:44 PM UTC-7, kpgp...@kpgpbhdw.com wrote:

I don't have any
adapters that could connect to the drive.

See the discussion at https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/sci.electronics.repair/5DY98Xu9osw

The adapters are inexpensive (under $10 from cheap eBay sellers) and very useful for quickly and easily attaching a hard drive to a computer.