Seagate SSHD Kahuna,5400, not spinning Topic is solved

[PC3K_USER]

Hello,

I have a dead drive and need your technical advise to fix it for data recovery purpose :

Original drive:
Seagate thin SSHD 500GB
MDL:ST00LM000
F/W:DEMC

Problem: Dead, not spinning, Busy all the time

What I did: Mounted donor drive's pcb on patient, starts spinning without any noise and becomes ready but of course can not access the user data.
Donor drive with patient PCB mounted does not spin and busy all the time. I concluded that the PCB is dead, so after backing up of all donor drive's ROM and modules I disoldered and transferred the
patient ROM to the donor PCB. Then, mounted the donor PCB on patient drive...same problem as original patient PCB, does not spin and busy....
I removed patient ROM and mounted back the donor ROM to the donor PCB, works fine on donor drive!
My final conclusion is that the original ROM is dead and I have to recover data from this HDD without having original PCB and ROM data.

My question is that:
1- For THIN SSHD drive, in order to adapt the donor PCB, is it enough just to transfer the original ROM to donor PCB? or I have to take care of other maters too?
2- From the above explanation, if your opinion is that the original ROM is dead, then is there any solution to recover data from this HDD without having original ROM? I would like to have your kind advise in this regard.

Donor drive:
Seagate thin SSHD 500GB
MDL:ST00LM000
F/W:DEMG

PC3000 express recognizes the drive as:
72, Kahuna, 5400

I appreciate any help or advise

[AJ2008]

This model of HDD has a NAND chip fitted to the PCB which contains a copy of the most frequently accessed information in order to allow improved performace during access to the most used data. The NAND also contains a copy of ROM and some overlays. When ROM / OVerlays are present in NAND they are loaded here by default as opposed to loading the contents of the actual ROM chip. This means that when transferring patient ROM to donor PCB the donor PCB will not acknowledge new ROM until donor NAND has been 'flushed'.

Can you see any terminal output when drive is powered?

[PC3K_USER]

Hi AJ2008,

Either with patient PCB/ ROM or Donor PCB with patient ROM, there is no terminal output.
You mean I have to transfer the NAND chip as well?

[AJ2008]

No, probably it is the NAND that is bad. Or possibly something is not native here. You need to put patient ROM to donor PCB then find a way to 'empty' donor NAND chip. First I would read ROM and check Serial Number to be sure it is native - I see often in these cases clients change PCB themselves before consulting professional recovery.

[digitalsupport]

Source of the post No, probably it is the NAND that is bad. Or possibly something is not native here. You need to put patient ROM to donor PCB then find a way to 'empty' donor NAND chip. First I would read ROM and check Serial Number to be sure it is native - I see often in these cases clients change PCB themselves before consulting professional recovery.

Just had one of these today where a client "forgot" to tell that pcb was not native. So send him home to look up the "original"

[PC3K_USER]

Source of the post No, probably it is the NAND that is bad. Or possibly something is not native here. You need to put patient ROM to donor PCB then find a way to 'empty' donor NAND chip. First I would read ROM and check Serial Number to be sure it is native - I see often in these cases clients change PCB themselves before consulting professional recovery.

Hello AJ2008
Thank you for the reply.
I am sure the PCB and all components are native... When I received the HDD it was intact.
As I mentioned before, I already have transferred the patient ROM to the donor PCB...result is completely dead PCB, no terminal output.
Patient PCB has terminal output with donor ROM, but no terminal output with its own ROM mounted

My understanding is that patient ROM itself is bad and I have to find solution to adapt a non native PCB to patient HDD...
BTW, why do you think the NAND chip is bad? Have you experienced any similar case before?

[AJ2008]

did you try to read ROM over boot code, maybe you can still extract adaptive information from it to write to donor ROM.

does donor PCB have same FW version on label as patient?

[AJ2008]

Just had one of these today where a client "forgot" to tell that pcb was not native. So send him home to look up the "original"

this happens more often than I would like it to

[PC3K_USER]

Hello,

Thanks to AJ2008 who kindly replied me and his comments and hints made me to think twice about the possible solution,that finally helped me to fix the HDD and clone it successfully.
I could get patient ROM image that was partially corrupted using “boot code” and could extract important parts and inject it to the donor ROM. I also transferred the patient NAND chip(very tough job) to the donor PCB. With doing all of these, patient HDD still was busy for about 20 minutes, but finally became ready. Tried to launch PC3K utility, became busy again…by canceling steps entered utility to check terminal outputs. Inside utility power OFF/ON again and waited 20 minutes. When ready, any attempt to access service area, ended up to an endless busy status until power off/on again.
While drive was ready, but not recognized by utility, by chance, I tried to read a sector and... BINGO ..Could read sector 0, but not possible to advance to the next sectors because maxlba was 0 by default (was not possible to set maxlba, because HDD was not recognized yet).
So, show starts from here, power off/on the drive, wait 20 minutes, its ready and spinning... launched the data extractor… existence of any checkmarks made the drive to access service area and endless busy…so, removed all check marks entered MAX LBA manually. Entered the data extractor while drive is still ready…start cloning, and it went well … could get complete image of the patient HDD and recover all data.
I never have bumped to the Seagate SSHD HDD with faulty ROM before …this was good experience for me. I hope it would be a little help if you face the same problem in the future.

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Source of the post Hello,

Thanks to AJ2008 who kindly replied me and his comments and hints made me to think twice about the possible solution,that finally helped me to fix the HDD and clone it successfully.
I could get patient ROM image that was partially corrupted using “boot code” and could extract important parts and inject it to the donor ROM. I also transferred the patient NAND chip(very tough job) to the donor PCB. With doing all of these, patient HDD still was busy for about 20 minutes, but finally became ready. Tried to launch PC3K utility, became busy again…by canceling steps entered utility to check terminal outputs. Inside utility power OFF/ON again and waited 20 minutes. When ready, any attempt to access service area, ended up to an endless busy status until power off/on again.
While drive was ready, but not recognized by utility, by chance, I tried to read a sector and... BINGO ..Could read sector 0, but not possible to advance to the next sectors because maxlba was 0 by default (was not possible to set maxlba, because HDD was not recognized yet).
So, show starts from here, power off/on the drive, wait 20 minutes, its ready and spinning... launched the data extractor… existence of any checkmarks made the drive to access service area and endless busy…so, removed all check marks entered MAX LBA manually. Entered the data extractor while drive is still ready…start cloning, and it went well … could get complete image of the patient HDD and recover all data.
I never have bumped to the Seagate SSHD HDD with faulty ROM before …this was good experience for me. I hope it would be a little help if you face the same problem in the future.

Hi,
Thanks For Sharing Your Experience ,I Am Sure There would Be a Method To Read Old NAND and write to new using terminal or other methods

[AJ2008]

Great news and a great result

[jinarto]

Thanks for sharing and good job for AJ2008

[cuumaytinh]

thanks. great job