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any hard drive guru here? help!

post #1 of 16
12/24/09 at 10:29pm
Thread Starter 
hi,

i know there are a lot of real smart people around here so i was hoping someone could help.

i have a wdc ide and the bios is corrupted. i know plenty well how to work with a bios. all i need is flash utility and the rom. i can't seem to find it anywhere! wdc said they will not give it to me but i can send it in for $99 to be "repaired". pffft. can anyone help here? maybe some way to get around the bios at low level without a special machine?

thanks,
music_man
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post #2 of 16
12/24/09 at 11:30pm
Do you mean the firmware code in the HDD drive itself has been corrupted ? If that is the case you are better off sending the drive to WD or getting yourself a new drive. Of course if the data is worth more than the repair cost than that is the way to go.

A low level access to the HDD firmware code is a daunting prospect even for highly experienced comp nerds.

Peete.
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post #3 of 16
12/24/09 at 11:54pm
Or the settings or config file that the BIOS uses has been trashed? How can a corrupted BIOS firmware upgrade itself if it is corrupted?
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post #4 of 16
12/25/09 at 12:36am
I think he's talking about the actual firmware/bios for the hard drive, in which case, such manual upgrades/repairs are almost unheard of.

There are, generally, various tools available for a user to adjust bios/firmware settings (write cache enabled, SATA speed, etc.) but I've never heard of anyone actually "flashing" a hard drive bios.

And regarding the comment/question:

Quote:
Originally Posted by wuwhere View Post
How can a corrupted BIOS firmware upgrade itself if it is corrupted?
In the event of repairing, say, a motherboard bios which has become corrupted, one does not actually use said corrupted bios to "upgrade itself" ... one would rather use a bootable disc of some kind which has a "flash" utility on it which is programmed to find the corrupted bios and do the upgrading externally. The corrupted bios never plays any sort of functional role in said scenario ... it just gets overwritten with new data.

...

BTW: just send the drive back to WD.

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post #5 of 16
12/25/09 at 1:17am
Quote:
Originally Posted by s1rrah View Post
In the event of repairing, say, a motherboard bios which has become corrupted, one does not actually use said corrupted bios to "upgrade itself" ... one would rather use a bootable disc of some kind which has a "flash" utility on it which is programmed to find the corrupted bios and do the upgrading externally. The corrupted bios never plays any sort of functional role in said scenario ... it just gets overwritten with new data.
Your talking about a motherboard BIOS. This f/w is in the HDD which has a separate processor and flash. If one is transferring and writing f/w into memory, which f/w does the writing and checking for CRC and where to write it to? Is there a bootstrap and/or bootloader in the HDD?
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post #6 of 16
12/25/09 at 1:18am
Question: How did the corruption happen and how do you know it's corrupted?

Very generally speaking, you're going to have better luck just sending it in.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wuwhere View Post
Your talking about a motherboard BIOS. This f/w is in the HDD which has a separate processor and flash. If one is transferring and writing f/w into memory, which f/w does the writing and checking for CRC and where to write it to? Is there a bootstrap and/or bootloader in the HDD?
Normally you boot into a clean session of dos and a flash program directly accesses the f/w in the drive. This usually requires either IDE or AHCI mode as any raid will not pass the instructions properly
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post #7 of 16
12/25/09 at 1:29am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nebby View Post
Question: How did the corruption happen and how do you know it's corrupted?
I was going to ask that too. Also, what if it is a hardware failure?
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post #8 of 16
12/25/09 at 1:31am
Quote:
Originally Posted by wuwhere View Post
Is there a bootstrap and/or bootloader in the HDD?
That's a question for Western Digital as they seem reluctant to share their means of updating (but I'd bet it's via an external program that can "find" the corrupt bios space in EPROM and overwrite it).

The other option would be to simply de solder and replace the bunk chip.

But then again ... I'm only a hack ... so all of that could be wrong.

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post #9 of 16
12/25/09 at 1:36am
If you can find an identical model hard drive you can always try swapping the board. I've done that a few times in the past to recover important data for people. I still have a 200gb seagate running on my sister's computer that I swapped the board on about 2 years ago. If you can grab the complete model number and post it here someone might have one sitting around that you could pick up cheap to try a board swap with.
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post #10 of 16
12/25/09 at 1:41am
Typically, the manufacturer's return and repair department have proprietary equipment for troubleshooting and repair. And the procedure on what to do and how to do it. So your best bet is just to ship it back and pay for the repair cost.
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post #11 of 16
12/25/09 at 1:50am
Quote:
Originally Posted by crapback View Post
If you can find an identical model hard drive you can always try swapping the board. I've done that a few times in the past to recover important data for people. I still have a 200gb seagate running on my sister's computer that I swapped the board on about 2 years ago. If you can grab the complete model number and post it here someone might have one sitting around that you could pick up cheap to try a board swap with.
And the same BIOS version.
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post #12 of 16
12/25/09 at 1:53am
Thread Starter 
there was a problem with certain older wd drives that they would fail with a corrupted firmware. it shows as the wrong drive in the mb bios and fails boot. it is a known issue. i pretty much knew i could not flash the firmware without having a hardware recovery system. i just figured i'd ask you guys in case someone knew something i did not.

unfortunatley it is way out of warranty. it is $99 to get it fixed. if it is worth it really in this situation depends on my time not the data. the data was cd's. about 600 of them written to wma lossless. i still have all the cd's. the issue comes down to it is a pain in the but to rip them all again.

however you guys are correct only wd or a data recovery clinic could fix it. it requires equipment/specialized hardware to repair this. i'd go with wd. they are twice the price of a data clinic i found but they made the drive so i trust them. anyhow, i now have much bigger/better drives and might as well just load everything on them. it's a pain but stuff happens. the cx1-iws does not even have ide so i might as well choke up and reload it. (i know you are shaking your heads, it is the work daw machine not really my personal machine). i am in charge of it though and it has plenty of space so i put some music i didn't record on it as well my own machine is just a core quad but i don't think it has ide either.

that drive actually failed 3 years ago. i just got to thinking about it tonite as i was throwing away trash.

thanks for the info guys,
music_man
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post #13 of 16
12/25/09 at 2:02am
Good choice to consider WD if you attempt to repair it. The flash chip on a HDD can't, to my knowledge, be flashed without the drive being in operating condition.

This brings up a related but off topic point- if you have a motherboard BIOS misflash, you can repair it in another board that uses the same BIOS type.

I once bricked a MSI KT4V-L board with a bad flash. I was able to run the BIOS utility on an identical board and hot-swap the BIOS for reflashing. Modern computers mirror the BIOS image to RAM when they boot so this procedure is safe as long as you don't short anything with your extractor tool.
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post #14 of 16
12/25/09 at 2:17am
There are ways to update firmware on them. Namely, a tool released from the manufacturer. I heard about an issue with a certain manufacturer's drives where firmware updates were necessary for proper operation.
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post #15 of 16
12/25/09 at 2:21am
Usually there are development and production f/w versions. The development version does not disable any of the ports, e.g., the the debug serial port and may even have logging capabilities that dumps debug logs to the debug port. But the production version may disable the debug port, toggles the flash rewrite, etc... This is why you can't reflash a production unit.
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