What happened to my hard drive?

[Meat Plow]

On Fri, 20 May 2011 13:25:54 +1000, Franc Zabkar wrote:

On Thu, 19 May 2011 22:10:27 +0000 (UTC), Meat Plow <mhywattt@yahoo.com
put finger to keyboard and composed:

I was under the assumption and don't ask why, newer drives have
engineering data written to NVRAM on the drive's board.

Head characteristics vary significantly. Some have better frequency
response than others, or they may have variations in the separation
between the read and write elements. To take advantage of the better
performing heads, drive manufacturers implement VBPI (Variable Bits Per
Inch) and VTPI (Variable Tracks Per Inch). The "adaptive" data for each
head need to be stored in NVRAM so that the drive's MCU can find the SA
(System Area).

This article should explain it:
http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_Tracks_and_Zones.html

You can see the adaptive data for a Seagate 7200.12 here:
http://forum.hddguru.com/seagate-7200-t10899.html

- Franc Zabkar

I've heard most of that before. It all used to be written to an
engineering track on the drive media at the factory. This is why a low
level format would probably destroy the drive. I figured sooner or later
it would be written to the drives electronics as they advanced.



--
Live Fast Die Young, Leave A Pretty Corpse

 

[Meat Plow]

On Fri, 20 May 2011 08:47:32 -0700, whit3rd wrote:

On Wednesday, May 18, 2011 3:34:55 PM UTC-7, Meat Plow wrote:

The BIOS should recognize a drive regardless of the state of the drives
partitioning, formatting etc. The BIOS via int13 says hello to the
drive's electronics and it reports back its CHS, LBA etc.. If this
doesn't occur it is a problem with the drive electronics.

The relevant issue, though, is that the drive in question was growing
bad sectors; even a 'good electronics' drive might NOT pass power-on
self test and will tell the control software NOTHING useful, when the
wear of years stops it from reliably reading the magnetic info.

Depends if the controller and BIOS are getting the info from NVRAM or an
engineering track on the platter. Don't know when this came about but
probably not back in a 40 GB drive. And apparently not when drives were
160 GB, Seagate Barracuda 7200 rpm. I've swapped electronics on two
identical drives one making some seek noises and constant clicking, and
one that was dead. I revived the dead drive and it worked fine for a
year. Both drives had run continuously in DVRs for at leat 2 years.

So not knowing which brands and models handle engineering data and when
they switched over if they did puts me at a disadvantage. I'm just trying
to develop the overall picture logically but will end up doing some
actual reading.



--
Live Fast Die Young, Leave A Pretty Corpse

 

[mike]

On May 20, 1:17 pm, "Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terr...@earthlink.net>
wrote:

Shaun wrote:

It's a 40 Gb drive,  very old technology.  Just through it out and buy a new
drive.  You'll probably get a 500 Gb for $30 some dollars.

  That kind of defeats the reason for having a repair REPAIR newsgroup.

Just a follow-up on the drive - whatever happened to it, neither the

electronics
nor the recording-media part of it work any more. After careful
inspection, there
are no problems with bent pins, or other physical problems apparent.
I spose
I might have an intermittent IDE cable which only acted up maybe a
couple of times
during the dozens of cyclings of various programs and test runs, but
the cables on
there are the kink with an extra gizmo to pull the cable lose from
the plug without
stressing the cable-to-plug connection. Anyway, thanks to all for
the suggestions,
I was successful at least in learning a bit more about how hard
drives work.

Mikel

 

[Mysterious Traveler]

On 05/21/2011 06:58 AM, mike wrote:

On May 20, 1:17 pm, "Michael A. Terrell"<mike.terr...@earthlink.net
wrote:
Shaun wrote:

It's a 40 Gb drive, very old technology. Just through it out and buy a new
drive. You'll probably get a 500 Gb for $30 some dollars.

That kind of defeats the reason for having a repair REPAIR newsgroup.

Just a follow-up on the drive - whatever happened to it, neither the
electronics
nor the recording-media part of it work any more. After careful
inspection, there
are no problems with bent pins, or other physical problems apparent.
I spose
I might have an intermittent IDE cable which only acted up maybe a
couple of times
during the dozens of cyclings of various programs and test runs, but
the cables on
there are the kink with an extra gizmo to pull the cable lose from
the plug without
stressing the cable-to-plug connection. Anyway, thanks to all for
the suggestions,
I was successful at least in learning a bit more about how hard
drives work.

Mikel
There is a 80gig IDE drive for $18.99 at

http://www.geeks.com/products.asp?cat=HDD


--
Did the rapture happen yet?

 

[mike]

On May 21, 12:07 pm, Mysterious Traveler <mysterious.trave...@dot.net>
wrote:

There is a 80gig IDE drive for $18.99 athttp://www.geeks.com/products.asp?cat=HDD

--
Did the rapture happen yet?

Good price, but if I needed a disk I think I'd do a little research
and see if there isn't
one with double or thrice the capacity for a few bucks more that has
some kind of decent
reputation - if there is such a thing.

However, I wouldn't buy anything from computer geeks, they cured me of
long distance shopping
a few years ago when they did the ole bait and switch trick on me,
maybe they're better now
but at the time they were selling crap that didn't work.

Mike

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

mike wrote:

On May 20, 1:17 pm, "Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terr...@earthlink.net
wrote:
Shaun wrote:

It's a 40 Gb drive, very old technology. Just throw it out
and buy a new drive. You'll probably get a 500 Gb for $30
some dollars.

That kind of defeats the reason for having a REPAIR newsgroup.

Just a follow-up on the drive - whatever happened to it, neither the
electronics nor the recording-media part of it work any more. After
careful inspection, there are no problems with bent pins, or other
physical problems apparent. I suppose I might have an intermittent
IDE cable which only acted up maybe a couple of times during the
dozens of cyclings of various programs and test runs, but the cables
on there are the kink with an extra gizmo to pull the cable lose from
the plug without stressing the cable-to-plug connection. Anyway,
thanks to all for the suggestions, I was successful at least in
learning a bit more about how hard drives work.

You may have some cracked solder joints on the controller board on
the drive, or other problems. Some repairs are beyond the average tech,
because they don't have the right tools available. You need good
magnification and a steady hand to resolder some ultra fine pitch ICs,
and most people can't do it even with the right tools. I keep dead
drives on hand to swap boards and sometimes repair a controller board,
but I worked in electronics manufacturing where it was part of my job to
do that level of work. Just keep studying electronics and you may be
surprised at what you can learn.





--
It's easy to think outside the box, when you have a cutting torch.

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

mike wrote:

On May 21, 8:52 pm, "Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terr...@earthlink.net
wrote:
mike wrote:

On May 20, 1:17 pm, "Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terr...@earthlink.net

You may have some cracked solder joints on the controller board on
the drive, or other problems. Some repairs are beyond the average tech,
because they don't have the right tools available. You need good
magnification and a steady hand to resolder some ultra fine pitch ICs,
and most people can't do it even with the right tools.

Well, that's a thought, I've not spent any time looking over the
circuit board
under the magnifying light - but, I have no confidence in being able
to do
solder joint touch ups to a board with surface-mount components.
I was kind of transitioning out of electronics about the same time
surface
mount stuff started being used in everything,so I've never even seen
any
of the specialized tools up close.

I keep dead
drives on hand to swap boards and sometimes repair a controller board,
but I worked in electronics manufacturing where it was part of my job to
do that level of work. Just keep studying electronics and you may be
surprised at what you can learn.

Oh, yeah, gotta keep the ole synapses properly exercised, so why
not...

I was hand soldering leads spaced .015" center to center under a
stereo microscope just before I ended up on 100% disability. I miss
being able to do that kind of wotk, and the ~ $500,000 worth of test
equipment I had on my benches at work.


--
It's easy to think outside the box, when you have a cutting torch.

 

[mike]

On May 21, 8:52 pm, "Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terr...@earthlink.net>
wrote:

mike wrote:

On May 20, 1:17 pm, "Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terr...@earthlink.net

   You may have some cracked solder joints on the controller board on
the drive, or other problems.  Some repairs are beyond the average tech,
because they don't have the right tools available.  You need good
magnification and a steady hand to resolder some ultra fine pitch ICs,
and most people can't do it even with the right tools.

Well, that's a thought, I've not spent any time looking over the
circuit board
under the magnifying light - but, I have no confidence in being able
to do
solder joint touch ups to a board with surface-mount components.
I was kind of transitioning out of electronics about the same time
surface
mount stuff started being used in everything,so I've never even seen
any
of the specialized tools up close.

 I keep dead
drives on hand to swap boards and sometimes repair a controller board,
but I worked in electronics manufacturing where it was part of my job to
do that level of work.  Just keep studying electronics and you may be
surprised at what you can learn.  

Oh, yeah, gotta keep the ole synapses properly exercised, so why
not...

--
It's easy to think outside the box, when you have a cutting torch.

 

[Splork]

On Sat, 21 May 2011 13:37:03 -0700 (PDT), mike
<mlightner@survivormail.com> wrote:

On May 21, 12:07 pm, Mysterious Traveler <mysterious.trave...@dot.net
wrote:


There is a 80gig IDE drive for $18.99 athttp://www.geeks.com/products.asp?cat=HDD

--
Did the rapture happen yet?

Good price, but if I needed a disk I think I'd do a little research
and see if there isn't
one with double or thrice the capacity for a few bucks more that has
some kind of decent
reputation - if there is such a thing.

However, I wouldn't buy anything from computer geeks, they cured me of
long distance shopping
a few years ago when they did the ole bait and switch trick on me,
maybe they're better now
but at the time they were selling crap that didn't work.

Mike

Here's a good 160

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170645120419&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT