[Gllug] Anyone know anything about hardware ?

[Joel Bernstein]

On Mon, Jan 24, 2005 at 04:55:42PM -0000, Wiehe, Simon wrote:
> > Firstly, please do try to keep your lines under 76 characters in length.
> 
> I shall try :-)
> 
> > Secondly, you haven't mentioned what kind of disk it is. SCSI? IDE?
> > Something else entirely? Who made it? What model of disk is it?
> 
> It's a Fujitsu MPG3204AT 20 Gb IDE drive.
> 
> The recovery company in question is
> http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/fujitsu-hard-disk-recovery.htm
> 
> I have seen a similar explanation as to the fault at other sites, both data
> recovery and 
> general sites.
> 
> > Apart from anything else, a data recovery company is likely to have a
> > vested interest in misinforming you about the possibility of swapping
> > disk controllers ;)
> 
> Hence my post here because I can't help thinking its to protect their business

Fujitsu have a post regarding this: 
http://www.fcpa.fujitsu.com/products/hard-drives/hd-public-statment.html

Basically it looks as though there's a fault with the Cirrus Logic
controller chip, a CL-SH8671-450E. Does your drive have one of these? If
so, there's a drive BIOS upgrade available from Fujitsu which *may* fix
the problem. If it doesn't, I think you should probably take the warning
about removing the controller board to heart. I've not seen this warning
for other drives so there might just be something in it for this one...

It sounds as though your drive may work when cool, but not once it warms
up. This seems to be typical of the problem relating to the CL
controller chip.

/joel
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