ST1000DL002 head swap

[seasaw]

Hi all! I'm not in the business, but just a guy who invested too much time in youtube tutorials who now thinks he may be able to pull this off

My question is easy: After I swap the heads, will I need to align, calibrate, program anything? The videos show how to swap heads, but the videos stop there and I'm not sure if there is anything else to know after putting the cover back on. Is it really that straightforward?

In my defense, if someone can use packing tape and random bits of plastic to swap platters on a workbench, then maybe it's not too laughable for me to try swapping heads https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZx-tU1_gOw

Here is the full story if anyone is interested:

My drive is about 6 years old and I left youtube auto-playing all night only awaken to a frozen pc. The drive spins up and sounds normal to an untrained ear, but it causes the bios to hang for a long time and finally isn't recognized. A couple guys have already predicted that the problem probably is not the PCB, so I'm assuming the heads are at fault.

My plan is to (hopefully) find an identical drive and first try the PCB/ROM swap. If that doesn't work, I'll swap the heads. But before I put the plan into action, I need to know if anything requires alignment or if the heads really are "plug n play".

All comments and criticism is welcome. Thanks!

 

[pclab]

Hi

Just swap PCB will not work. You will have to transfer ROM as well.
But to give you a proper diagnostic, you should at least try to give us a terminal log (since you already searched so much for head swap, you can also search on how to to connect to terminal ehhehehe)
Don't go for a head swap without knowing what's wrong with the drive....
You want to do a heart surgery without knowing the patient disease....

 

[Jared]

[post]9380[/post] The drive spins up and sounds normal to an untrained ear, but it causes the bios to hang for a long time and finally isn't recognized.

Actually, if the drive is spinning and sounds normal, there's about an 80% chance that neither platter swap nor head swap will be required. Most drives with bad heads will click and eventually spin back down. The fact that yours isn't doing that indicates a high likelihood that it's actually a firmware related issue. It's pretty common to see Seagate drives go bad due to corrupted firmware modules or translation issues.

[post]9380[/post] My plan is to (hopefully) find an identical drive and first try the PCB/ROM swap.

Can't hurt to try, but it's also unlikely to be the issue.

As PCLab already said, you should TTL into the drive and get a terminal dump of what it posts on power up. That'll tell us 90% of the story of what's going on.

 

[seasaw]

Actually, if the drive is spinning and sounds normal, there's about an 80% chance that neither platter swap nor head swap will be required.

Really? That's what I thought too, but I called one of the more-popular youtube content creators who was confident the problem is an inability to read the firmware. To which I replied, "yeah but your comment to another guy on youtube was '99.9% of time if the drive spins it's not the pcb'". He said "Right, I'm talking about the firmware on the disk. The drive is unable to read the disk." I didn't think to ask, but I assumed he meant because of the heads.

Then I emailed two others: One said 50/50 it's the pcb and the other said probably not the pcb. I asked why he thought it wasn't the pcb and he replied that it's because of the bios hang... meaning the pcb works but can't communicate or retrieve data from the disk. I'm guessing that the bios knows the device is there, but must timeout after lack of identification.

Anyway, those interactions left me with the impression that consensus of opinion was the heads, but I'm still hoping it's the pcb.

Most drives with bad heads will click and eventually spin back down. The fact that yours isn't doing that indicates a high likelihood that it's actually a firmware related issue. It's pretty common to see Seagate drives go bad due to corrupted firmware modules or translation issues.

That's a comforting diagnosis (assuming you mean a module on the pcb). I don't want to crack the drive open and it seems much easier to find another pcb than drive heads.

[post]9380[/post] My plan is to (hopefully) find an identical drive and first try the PCB/ROM swap.

Can't hurt to try, but it's also unlikely to be the issue.

PCB is unlikely to be the issue? Now I'm confused. If not the pcb, not the heads, not the platters, then what is left?

As PCLab already said, you should TTL into the drive and get a terminal dump of what it posts on power up. That'll tell us 90% of the story of what's going on.

I don't know how to do that, but I guess I could research it. The drive used to identify as ST3120212AS after the failure and now it doesn't even do that much. Does that help any? It seems to indicate that it's getting progressively worse.

I bought some torx bits yesterday and did the eraser trick on the contacts (they were pretty dirty), but haven't tried the drive yet. I was warned not to spin the drive up frivolously. I may try it tonight with a stethoscope for better audibility... or perhaps I should wait for further replies before proceeding. Oh, I also checked the diodes and they appeared to be fine (as expected).

The only other clues I can offer at the moment is that I'm sure the failure resulted from heat since I was boiling maple sap that night and left youtube autoplaying all night. Another time I left the pc compressing mp3 files all night and woke to a frozen pc, so the drives always seem to fail the same way. After 5 years of religiously backing up data, I start to get lazy and it gets me every time.

Thanks for the help. I'll dig into the TTL thing.

 

[seasaw]

Just swap PCB will not work. You will have to transfer ROM as well.

I will. If I can't do it myself, I can find someone locally to swap it. I have a decent iron and solder-sucker, but not sure if I can solder that small or not.

But to give you a proper diagnostic, you should at least try to give us a terminal log (since you already searched so much for head swap, you can also search on how to to connect to terminal ehhehehe)

LOL! Good one! I have at least 8 hrs over 2 days of watching videos and reading comments.

Don't go for a head swap without knowing what's wrong with the drive....
You want to do a heart surgery without knowing the patient disease....

Good point but my plan is sequential... I'll start with the pcb and if that doesn't work, then I'll progress to the heads. Of course, I'll definitely bow to any wisdom offered here first.

 

[pclab]

I think that your first move should be to get the terminal log, even before you swap PCB.

 

[Jared]

[post]9394[/post] I think that your first move should be to get the terminal log, even before you swap PCB.

+1 +1 +1 to this.

Don't assume your youtube buddies actually know what they are doing, or that they succeeded on the cases you see there. I see a ton of amateur mistakes on many of these guys videos.

 

[seasaw]

I think that your first move should be to get the terminal log, even before you swap PCB.

Why is it important to get a terminal log before swapping the pcb? In order to do that, I will need to buy a serial adapter and learn how to use it. I read some pages that are filled with warnings about bricking the drive if inexperienced with the commands. They even recommend using a UPS to be sure the power doesn't fail. It seems risky. Why not just swap the pcb?

I'm not being argumentative, I just want to understand why you recommend a terminal log first.

[post]9394[/post] I think that your first move should be to get the terminal log, even before you swap PCB.

+1 +1 +1 to this.

Don't assume your youtube buddies actually know what they are doing, or that they succeeded on the cases you see there. I see a ton of amateur mistakes on many of these guys videos.

You guys are more my buddies than they are. One guy quoted me $900 and the other $350, so definitely not buddies. I'm trying not to assume anything, but I'm starting from the ground floor without the benefit of prior experience so I'm not sure what to believe.

Do you think the firmware problem is contained on the pcb or on the platter? That is what I'm most confused about. The $900 guy said it's on the platter, but I'm unable to verify that and am starting to doubt he is right.

I found this:

These are instructions for fixing a Seagate 7200.11 hard drive that is stuck in the BSY state. This can be determined by the fact that it won't be recognized by the computer's BIOS. https://sites.google.com/site/seagatefix/

Wouldn't a pcb swap also fix that problem? Or no? Lots of sites sell pcbs, including ebay and amazon. For example https://www.onepcbsolution.com/729280389st.html

(Not sure why the text such large spaces between words. I didn't type it like that and can't seem to fix it.)

 

[pclab]

I think that your first move should be to get the terminal log, even before you swap PCB.

Why is it important to get a terminal log before swapping the pcb? In order to do that, I will need to buy a serial adapter and learn how to use it. I read some pages that are filled with warnings about bricking the drive if inexperienced with the commands. They even recommend using a UPS to be sure the power doesn't fail. It seems risky. Why not just swap the pcb?

I'm not being argumentative, I just want to understand why you recommend a terminal log first.

[post]9394[/post] I think that your first move should be to get the terminal log, even before you swap PCB.

+1 +1 +1 to this.

Don't assume your youtube buddies actually know what they are doing, or that they succeeded on the cases you see there. I see a ton of amateur mistakes on many of these guys videos.

You guys are more my buddies than they are. One guy quoted me $900 and the other $350, so definitely not buddies. I'm trying not to assume anything, but I'm starting from the ground floor without the benefit of prior experience so I'm not sure what to believe.

Do you think the firmware problem is contained on the pcb or on the platter? That is what I'm most confused about. The $900 guy said it's on the platter, but I'm unable to verify that and am starting to doubt he is right.

I found this:

These are instructions for fixing a Seagate 7200.11 hard drive that is stuck in the BSY state. This can be determined by the fact that it won't be recognized by the computer's BIOS. https://sites.google.com/site/seagatefix/

Wouldn't a pcb swap also fix that problem? Or no? Lots of sites sell pcbs, including ebay and amazon. For example https://www.onepcbsolution.com/729280389st.html

(Not sure why the text such large spaces between words. I didn't type it like that and can't seem to fix it.)

You need to know how a Seagate drive works.
To be fast, they have rom on pcb (which is unique for your drive) and also firmware modules on platters so they need both to be in good condition.
It's more important to start by the terminal log, because with that log we can know what's going on with the drive (if it's a firmware problem, or a head problem)
I'm almost sure that swapping pcb won't help for now...

Enviado do meu MI 5s através do Tapatalk

 

[Jared]

[post]9401[/post] Why is it important to get a terminal log before swapping the pcb?

For the same reason that your doctor runs tests before performing surgery. Why risk the possibility of losing your data permanently (which will happen if you overheat the ROM chip) when a simple test could clearly tell you that it isn't the problem (which it almost certainly isn't in your case).

[post]9401[/post] I will need to buy a serial adapter and learn how to use it.

All you need to buy is one of these and you can use free programs like putty or hyperterminal to use it: https://www.ebay.com/itm/CP2102-USB-2-0 ... SwxbpZl5x6

[post]9401[/post] I read some pages that are filled with warnings about bricking the drive if inexperienced with the commands.

Yes, no one is suggesting you try to fix it through terminal at this point, we're just suggesting you connect it and power on the drive. On startup the drive will post a log of what's going on which we can use to diagnose the issue.

[post]9401[/post] Do you think the firmware problem is contained on the pcb or on the platter?

It's on the platters, not on the PCB. The only thing on the PCB is the ROM (read only memory) which is only a small fraction of the firmware code and as the name implies is read only. If the ROM were bad, the drive almost certainly wouldn't spin at all.

[post]9401[/post] Wouldn't a pcb swap also fix that problem?

Nope, not a chance. See above answer.