PC-3000 Flash. How to work with the problem memory chips.

Posted on 03/21/2016 by ACELab team

There are a lot of different memory chips with reading problems such as not corrected ECC errors, dump filled by “FF” or other pattern etc.

In this article we would like to talk about different problematic memory chips and solutions for them.

Toshiba-256GB-TLC-NAND-Flash-Memory-Chip-620x400

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PC-3000 Flash. Grinding MicroSD with the help of Fibreglass Pen Brush

Posted on 03/21/2016 by ACELab team

When we are speaking about monolith drive preparing for soldering, we should remember about one of the most important steps – grinding.

3-001

Grinding – is a special process of compound erasing from the bottom side of monolith device. During this process, engineer have to be very careful, because he can damage the cupper layer and make further monolith recovery absolutely impossible.

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PC-3000 HDD. Seagate F3. SMP flags issue

Posted on 03/01/2016 by ACELab team

A lot of Seagate F3 drives have a problem with LED errors, RWerror problems or just stay in BSY state.
In this article we would like to consider the popular solution for such cases.
Here is Seagate Grenada drive with BSY state and LED:BD error in terminal report.

01

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Posted in Articles, PC-3000 HDD, Video | 2 Comments

PC-3000 for HDD. Seagate F3 architecture drives specific diagnostics

Posted on 02/12/2016 by ACELab team

In the Basic HDD diagnostics procedure post we looked at the common steps of diagnostics for any HDD.

Now we will look at the specific steps of diagnostics of Seagate F3 architecture drives.

Seagate F3

In this article we will discuss the most typical situations and scenarios of Seagate F3 drives diagnostics. We will not dive deep into the solutions since it can make this article endless. We just point out the way to understand the specific issue. Continue reading →

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PC-3000 for HDD. Seagate F3. 7 known situations when we can’t recover translator automatically

Posted on 02/08/2016 by ACELab team

forks

The translator is quite a common failure on Seagate F3.
The typical sign is readable sectors at the beginning and unreadable sectors at the end. To be 100% sure that you have a translator problem need to built a headmap in DataExtractor and check the reading of some sectors by each head. As alternative you can check access to some of last sectors via Utility.

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PC-3000 for HDD. WD Marvell drives specific diagnostics.

Posted on 02/08/2016 by ACELab team

In the Basic HDD diagnostics procedure post we looked at the common steps of diagnistics for any HDD.

Now we will look at the specific steps of diagnostics of WD Marvell drives.

In this article we will discuss the most typical situations and scenarios of WD Marvell drives diagnostics. We will not dive deep into the solutions since it can make this article endless. We just point out the way to understand the specific issue.

Also I must note that very often the drive can have not just one problem but a combination of them. For example very typical scenario – so called “Slow Responding problem”:

A writing element of one head degrades ⇒ the firmware detects that sectors were read with errors and adds them to the candidates defect list (R-List) ⇒ The R-List becomes overfilled with fake defects ⇒ the firmware start freezing during drives initialization ⇒ the drive can’t start normally (stays always busy) and we can’t access to the User data.

So we need to understand the internal processes of the drive to find out the source of the problem.

When we diagnose WD drive we should know how to easily determine its architecture.
The easiest way is to look at the PCB.
We can unmistakably determine the architecture by the MCP on the PCB.
Marvell MCP on WD Marvell architecture drives and
WDC MCP on WD Caviar architecture drives.

01.WD arch Continue reading →

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PC-3000 Flash. Circuit Board. Power supply features

Posted on 02/05/2016 by ACELab team

Due to the fact that many people have a problem with PC-3000 Circuit Board adapter, we suggest to take a look on the principles of the power supply commutation for different devices.

Here you can see appearance of the PC-3000 Circuit Board adapter:
Circuit Board

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PC-3000 HDD. How to find out the problems in WD Marvell drives

Posted on 02/03/2016 by ACELab team

20150714124413_western_digital_wd25ezrs_2_5tb

There are several situations could be with a Western Digital drive.

Let’s take a look the most popular of them and discuss about diagnostics and solutions

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PC-3000 for HDD. How to check system heads manually on WD drives.

Posted on 02/03/2016 by ACELab team

The procedure is applicable both for WD Marvell and WD Caviar architecture drives.

When we recover Service Area modules we need to be sure that system heads are able to write modules in SA without errors.

Make sure that you have a backup of all important modules of ROM and SA modules before making any changes since we never know the exact moment when heads stop working.

You can perform a full Backup of all resources by pressing “HDD resources backup”.

01_Backup

Here is the recommended manual method to check system heads.
At first we open “Modules directory”:
Tools => Utility extensions => Modules directory

04_Modules_Dir Continue reading →

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TS service feedback

Posted on 01/29/2016 by ACELab team

Dear ACELab customers!

In case of any inconvenience please contact Head of ACELab Technical Support Department using the following email address:

support@acelab.eu.com

Posted in Data Extractor | 5 Comments