On Thu, 13 May 2010 11:40:28 -0700, "David Farber"
put finger to keyboard and composed:

I use my generic, home made, pc to test and analyze client's hard drives.
The motherboard in my pc is an ECS NFORCE3. It's never given me any
problems. When I hooked up the test drive in question (lots of knocking
noises) on the second IDE channel, the pc booted, the pc speaker beeped once
(normal for this pc), but it just froze after that. I rebooted and tried to
go into the setup menu but that didn't work either. I gave up on the test
and removed the drive I was checking. But now, the same problem occurs. The
pc powers up, speaker beeps, and it freezes there. If I press "delete" to
enter setup, it just hangs without going into setup. If I remember
correctly, immediately after removing the test drive, I was able to get to
the bios menu but it said no drive was installed. I used the internal clear
CMOS jumper to reset the bios but the outcome was the same. Now, I am not
even able to get that far. If I put in any other drive, I am able to access
the bios menu and the drive is recognized correctly. I was not having any
problems with the drive before adding the test drive on the secondary IDE
channel. I can feel the motor humming when the machine is powered up. I've
tried switching between "cable select" and "master=on, slave =off," that
didn't help. There are no clicking or foreign noises. I was hoping to
purchase a used drive of the same model and swap out the controller boards.
My question is, how close of a match do these boards have to be? So far I
have found the same drive model number and firmware code, but a different
HDA p/n. Anyone have any luck doing a swap like this? Is there some
identifying data on the hard drive platters themselves that would cause the
drive to "disappear" like this? I did try the drive in another pc. It gave a
similar error, "Drive not detected," and asked if I wanted to bypass the
detection process.

Thanks for your reply.


If the drive spins up but is not detected, then the fault is most
likely inside the HDA (head/disc assembly). However, I have seen cases
where a bad IDE cable produces the same symptom. That said, if you
decide to replace the circuit board, be prepared to transplant the
serial EEPROM (flash) chip from patient to donor. On newer models this
chip stores unique drive specific calibration data.

See the following article for help in identifying the components.

HDD from inside Main parts:
http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_from_inside.html

The following article explains why drives have "adaptive" data.

HDD from inside: Tracks and Zones. How hard it can be?
http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_Tracks_and_Zones.html

Essentially the reason is that no two heads are physically identical.
HD manufacturers try to fit as much data as possible onto each
platter. To do this, they take advantage of any head that performs
better than the average.

For example, some heads will have a better frequency response than
others, which means that you can cram more bits on each track. This
technique is called Variable Bits Per Inch (VBPI).

Giant magnetorestive (GMR) heads use a separate element for writing
and another for reading. The separation between these two components
varies from head to head. Once again manufacturers optimise data
density by implementing Variable Tracks Per Inch (VTPI).

Each HD therefore needs to be calibrated to account for VBPI and VTPI,
otherwise the drive doesn't know where to find the tracks, or the data
within the track. When a drive powers up, it needs to retrieve the
bulk of its firmware from a reserved area (System Area) on the
platters. If it can't read these data, then it clicks. This is what
usually happens after you swap a board without transferring the
calibration information.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.