How to check the bad sectors on SA

Here is a typical case about how to confirm the bad sectors on SA.

Yesterday we got a patient Hitachi drive, the error symbol seems like a firmware problem, when we load from HDD, nothing show except the error status:

Then we choose the HDD series by manual; add the HDD series resource to the computer:

Then we could access the firmware modules:

Check the error condition for the modules:

From the above picture, we found that many key modules are broken, even include the PSHT module. Now we need to switch SA-A to SA-C, backup the broken modules and upload to SA-A.

But after we backup the donor firmware from SA-C and want to upload them to SA-A, so strange condition happened:

After click “Upload”, the program is no response at all, but look at the console, the DSAP light will blink sometimes, then we try to upload those module once more, however, there is still no response after clicking, and soon turn back to status before rewrite.

There are two reason may cause this error condition: one is head broken, the other is bad sectors on SA. Now we must confirm what the problem is, the head or the bad sector?

Double click one normal module, modify one or some bits, and click “Direct Write”, we found the write success:

Then re-open this module, we found that the position where we modified just now was saved. So that means we have change some firmware through the head write function, which represents the head is working well. So the only reason is the bad sectors on SA.

Key points: