HD253GJ BSY Issue....

[EADR]

Hi All,

I have a Samsung HD253GJ the spins up clicks once only then promptly spins down again but remains busy whilst the power in on without any other error. Has anyone come across this before?

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated..

Thanks...

Steve..

[ACE_Admin]

Hello Steve

First, make sure PC USB Terminal is properly installed in your system, and PC-3000 UDMA settings are correct.
In main menu Tools->Settings->Com port tab, correct com port has to be set.

This drive belong to F3 family. Connect a terminal adapter onto this drive, force enter PC-3000 Samsung utility and switch to terminal tab.
Then restart the drive and see all terminal output from the beginning. Copy that here and I will tell you further steps for this drive.

[EADR]

Hi Roustam, thanks for the reply. I managed to get this problem sorted, although I do not really understand what it was. I managed to locate a very suitable donor, and performed a hot swap. Strangely, just the hot swap was needed (no firmware mods) to reach and read the LBA's, so the drive was imaged and all data recovered successfully.

However....even stranger was that after the hot swap I powered down the drive, fitted the original PCB back to the patient and powered it back up.............. it came ready and was accessible. There was no modification of either the firmware or ROM performed by myself, but it seems that the hot swap was all that was needed to bring this drive back to life. I have also experienced this on some of the latest WD 2TB drives (same symptom, and same result after a straight hot swap)..

Just thought I'd let you guy's know the outcome of this one....


Steve..

[ThomasH]

I've read of a few cases of this exact drive where for some reason, it just came back to life after experiencing this exact problem. I don't have a donor yet to try hotswap, but I have the exact same issue.
Were any more specifics/tricks ever discovered for this issue?
HD253GJ spins up, starts to read SA for just 1 sec then immediately spins down.

[AJ2008]

Strangely, just the hot swap was needed (no firmware mods) to reach and read the LBA's, so the drive was imaged and all data recovered successfully.

There was no shifts in data?

However....even stranger was that after the hot swap I powered down the drive, fitted the original PCB back to the patient and powered it back up.............. it came ready and was accessible.
Steve..

Ive seen a lot of Samsung cases recently where contact is bad, clean with fibreglass pen and data is accessible. Maybe in this case contacts were bad and removing / replacing PCB during hotswap solved it

Usually when spindle stops on Samsung it is related to Alist or SMART.