Seagate ST4000DM004 ROM corruption ?

[Miodrag]

In first look like standard PCB issue, the drive was dead, without any signs of life . When PCB was changed with donor one (of course with rom swap) nothing changed, the drive stays dead. So the next step was trying with orig PCB but with donor rom chip and that bring life to the drive, he spins, get ready status but can't load properly. So next few hours I play with rom chip and his content. I didn't notice any problem with the rom chip I can read the content, erased it, and programming it without any error or corruption. So I'm not sure how can only rom content be corrupted here, the logical conclusion was that somebody messed up with the content of original rom?
In an attachment, I upload his "original" content of rom chip, so any suggestion about getting some light here is welcome. Thanks

[DataMedics]

Well, the messed up model number in ROM does suggest a problem with it:

ROM Issues.jpg (14.14 KiB) Viewed 49692 times

Possibly could be sabotage, or it might just be a bad read of the ROM. However, now that you've written over the ROM (something you never should have tried) there's no going back to attempt re-reading it.

Personally I always make two backups of a ROM before I even do something as small as modify headmap. Just in case you get a bad read (which has happened to me a couple times).

[Miodrag]

I don't think that is from bad reading ROM, I read it twice and compare the content (both ROMs were identical). Definitely is some sabotage, I will see how much time do I have to play with it.

[Blizzard]

Source of the post ...I upload his "original" content of rom chip, so any suggestion about getting some light here is welcome. Thanks

Are you sure you didn't upload a donor ROM by mistake? I see that exact Model + Serial available for download.

[Blizzard]

Source of the post Well, the messed up model number in ROM does suggest a problem with it:

That actually looks normal for ST4000DM004-2CV104 ROM. You can see model at address 1580E0 and serial at 158000.

[Miodrag]

Source of the post

Source of the post ...I upload his "original" content of rom chip, so any suggestion about getting some light here is welcome. Thanks

Are you sure you didn't upload a donor ROM by mistake? I see that exact Model + Serial available for download.

I upload original ROM from PCB and it is read twice (to confirm reading is ok). Data in ROM, regarding model and serial, are checked and look OK. Are you sure that you see same ROM (with the same model and sn ?) available for download somewhere else?

[Blizzard]

Source of the post ...Are you sure that you see same ROM (with the same model and sn ?) available for download somewhere else?

Yes, I'm sure. Only 4 bytes different. Check your PM.

[Doomer]

One of the ROM parts is corrupted but it's not the one with model or serial number
Try this flash and see if it works

[Takanashi_Hina]

You were not the first one to attempt to recover the data from the drive.

I would say that the drive was in "HDD Surgery" for recovery already and they did dump the firmware out of it and they did add it to their database :

http://firmware.hddsurgery.com/index.php

The unique serial number of your label does match the resource posted on the HDD Surgery firmware repository.

Try to write that ROM to your PCB and it should work as it should be the native copy.

Otherwise there is no way for your specific unique ROM to end up on the HDD Surgery firmware repository ...

Unless we are talking about fake drives with fake labels and you have a bunch of "clones" with the same serial on ROM and on fake label ... And that is not likely as ROM has to be unique anyway because of adaptives....

[Takanashi_Hina]

Or .... Maybe HDD Surgery did manage to get the firmware from a 3rd party like "maybe" HDD Surgery do get firmware from several data recovery firms and they do add that same firmware to the repository ? Who knows ...

But for the firmware to be on HDD Surgery site at least we know that someone did already attempt to use some firmware tool (PC-3000) on your specific drive.

Maybe you should try to use F3ROMExplorer tool on the HDD Surgery ROM dump and see if you can fix the damaged ROM.

Even the ROM posted on HDD Surgery is damaged. Doomer ROM will not work as well.

[Takanashi_Hina]

@fzabkar did an attempt to "fix" your ROM.

Please try this and post back the results.

Regards and good luck !

flash_repaired.rar

(331.14 KiB) Downloaded 1423 times

[Miodrag]

The drive was in HDD Surgery (or Helpdisc as they called on our market) I even confirm that with the client. They had access to the drive and dump complete firmware to their database. I'm not sure what exactly they did with it, but there are 4-byte differences in ROMs from there database and PCB that I read it from? I try with a different version/modification of ROM (Doomer, HDD Surgery and their comb flash_repairred) but the drive couldn't spin. If they had intentions to messed up the ROM content it would be the challenge to get it back

[Takanashi_Hina]

Uhhhmmm ...

Maybe we should try to move your adaptives to a donor ROM then ....

Try this :

ROM_ZFN0899X_with_ZFN0K0V9_adaptives.rar

(374.23 KiB) Downloaded 1426 times

[Takanashi_Hina]

Interesting .... aparently there is still a problem with the last one ...

Please try this one and see if at least the drive spin up :

flash_repaired.bin.zip

(693.36 KiB) Downloaded 1488 times

Good luck.

[Miodrag]

Source of the post Interesting .... aparently there is still a problem with the last one ...

Please try this one and see if at least the drive spin up :

flash_repaired.bin.zip

Good luck.

You got it with last change So the key part was on address 135FF0, now drive load normally with full access to data. Thanks all for clearing this mess, and especially Takanashi for his extra effort...