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Hitachi 5k80 Intermittent Clicking Noises

post #1 of 94
10/18/04 at 8:47pm
Thread Starter 
My Hitachi drive just will not stop clicking… This issue has been raised on this forum and other forums before, but I am not sure if a definitive resolution has been found. Apparently, these clicks are the result of Hitachi’s ABLE power management technology that appears to be over-aggressively and continually loading and unloading the drive’s heads. IBM has a short write-up that covers this issue: http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview...psg1MIGR-42320

Does anyone have a solution for this problem? I have tried to use Hitachi’s Feature Tool and Power Booster 2k to turn off APM, but these tools only allow me to set the power mode from 0x01 to 0xFF, and do not allow me to fully disable APM.

I have also noticed that Dell and IBM have released firmware updates for these drives to “correct an intermittent clicking noise issue.”:
http://support.dell.com/support/down...4953&devlib=26

http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview...1008&loc=en_US

Dell provides firmware version A5EA and IBM provides A5DA. My drive has firmware version A53A, which is seems to be an older version under this hexadecimal numbering scheme. I was about to update my drive using one of these firmwares, but first I contacted Hitachi support; here is their official response:
The drives manufactured for the OEMs like dell and IBM have custom
firmware on them. At this time, we do not have any generic firmware
updates for our Travelstar line of hard drives. Individual system
manufacturer's may release updates, but these are considered to be system
specific, and are not designed to be applied to a drive that does not fall
into the specific situation described on the manufacturer's website.
Applying a firmware update from a specific manufacturer to a drive that
does not meet the specific requirements can render the drive inoperable,
and is not recommended or supported by Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

Has anyone successfully updated their Hitachi 5k80 (or 7k60) drive using either the Dell or IBM firmware? If so, does it reduce the clicking noises? Also, if anyone has recently bought a 5k80 or 7k60 drive, what firmware revision did it come with? This can be checked using Everest from Lavalys, Drive Fitness Test from Hitachi, or with Power Booster 2k from Hitachi.

Thanks.
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post #2 of 94
10/19/04 at 2:12am
that response is BS, Others incuded myself who do not own a dell or IBM have updated the firmware in our drives and had to my understanding no one has had problems. I believe Hitachi was just covering their butts. I personally did it and would tell you to do it also but just make sure to follow the EXACT directions and you wil be find, Ill try to dig up the thread im referring too, Ill add it as an edit when i find it.
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post #3 of 94
10/19/04 at 7:39pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the response, I really appreciate it. I figured that the firmware update would work. However, I just wanted to be careful in order to avoid doing something prone to failure.

If you have the time, I have just a couple of questions:
Which firmware did you use to upgrade (Dell or IBM, and which revision)?

Is there a noticable difference in the clicking after the upgrade?

Did you upgrade using a bootable CD (or some other type of bootable USB drive)? My laptop lacks a floppy drive...
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post #4 of 94
10/19/04 at 9:12pm
1. I used the IBM firmware, I just dont trust dell with anything.
2. Yes there was a big difference. There is still a SLIGHT clicking noise but i cannot hear it over my laptop's fan.
3. I used a bootable USB flash drive.
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post #5 of 94
10/31/04 at 7:52am
Okey, sorry for picking up this old thread, but I need help.

First, Tomasz, did you succeed as well?

Stocktonnj, you say you where to dig up a thread with EXACT steps, but I don't see any. It would make me more comftable if I had a list to follow.

And last, what is a bootable USB flash drive, or a bootable CD? I only know the XP-bootable cd.
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post #6 of 94
10/31/04 at 1:50pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kantad
Okey, sorry for picking up this old thread, but I need help.

First, Tomasz, did you succeed as well?

Stocktonnj, you say you where to dig up a thread with EXACT steps, but I don't see any. It would make me more comftable if I had a list to follow.

And last, what is a bootable USB flash drive, or a bootable CD? I only know the XP-bootable cd.
I say this to you as a WARNING!
As you dont know or understand what a bootable USB device nor know what a bootable CD is you should not under go this update.
Firmware flashing can make or break your device be it you bios, optical drive etc. You need some understanding of firmware flashing to under go this.
Anyway in ones Bios you need to set the USB device to Boot if you have this option. From there on you need a device like a Flash memory stick or pen, hdd or floppy drive all USB in this case. LOAD your firmware on to it (device) and follow the instruction that are in the read me notes or on the site that the firmware came from.
If you need info on making a bootable CD look at these sites

http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/

http://www.burningissues.net/how_to/...eCD/bootcd.htm

http://www.iomega.com/support/manual...da/bootcd.html
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post #7 of 94
10/31/04 at 1:56pm
from what i know, hdd's start making click noises when they have bad sectors on them. run a checkup
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post #8 of 94
10/31/04 at 7:45pm
Wu-Tang.
Thank you, and also for your concern. Just to mention, it's not that I didn't now what a bootable drive is, just didn't now how to make one (or which usb-sticks that could have bootable option.) I've done a bootable cd ones to fix my bootsector - but a program made the cd.
Think i'll stick to the cd then.

Brib3, your right and I will double check that, though this issue is a knowed problem with Hitatchi 80Gb disks.
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post #9 of 94
12/31/04 at 5:17am
Thread Starter 
Well, I normally wouldn't re-resurrect an old thread like this, but I do have some updates.

I finally tried to update my hitachi 5k80 firmware. Unfortunately, both the IBM and Dell tools said that there is no new firmware for my drive. This is total BS because I'm running MG4OA53A and the newest firmware is MG4OA5EA! For reference, I tried to update using a bootable floppy from a USB floppy drive.

With some editing of configuration files, I was able to persuade the IBM tool to recognize that my drive needs an update (by default, FW.exe checks the current version of your firmware and only updates if it finds version A50A, A55A, or A5BA). The program appeared to do its thing, but apparantly, it didn't because my firmware version still shows up as MG4OA53A and the drive still clicks - although it seems as if the clicks might be lighter in sound now, but I'm probably just imagining things!

Now before I begin my lifetime boycott of Hitachi hard disks and take a sledgehammer to this drive, which I ironically bought because I though it would be very quiet, I have some questions for other Hitachi owners:

* If you have updated your firmware, please tell me how you did it. What firmware did you start with? Did the firmware version number get updated on the drive after the update? Did Windows recognize the drive as "new hardware" after the update?

* If you have a Hitachi drive that doesn't click (5k80 or 7k60 series), please tell me which firmware revision you are running. This can be easily found out using the Hitachi Feature Tool or Everest.

Thank you in advance.
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post #10 of 94
12/31/04 at 5:50am
i just got my 8600 on christmas and of course i got the 30gb HDD. it WONT STOP CLICKING(i have a 30gb hitachi). im losing my mind when im just surfing the net or doing some other things like word. im not at all experianced with flashing or whatever, so i wont be able to do this. ahhhhhhhhhhh all i hear is click click click click. i literally just have to put music on from media player so it wont drive me crazy! well i just wanted to share my experiance, and im just upset that i have no idea how to fix this by flashing it or whateve.





<-------crazzzzzyy
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post #11 of 94
1/3/05 at 10:51pm
Thread Starter 
Any Hitachi 5k80 or 7k60 owners, please answer the following questions, if possible, in order to help me to find a solution for my drive's "clicking" problem:

* Are you able to disable APM (power managment) completely using Hitachi's Feature Tool? If so, what firmware are you running? My firmware (A53A) will not allow me to do this! I only get the following options:
Active Idle
Low Power Idle
Standby

* More generally, is your drive also clicking at idle like mine? If it is not, then please tell me which firmware you are running and to what power mode your drive is set.

For reference, here are some more descriptions of the problem I'm encountering:
http://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/pipermai...er/001703.html
http://forums.storagereview.net/inde...howtopic=14145
http://www.gpforums.co.nz/showthread...hreadid=249155
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post #12 of 94
3/19/05 at 11:54am
Resurrecting the tread... Tomasz, I have been able to upgrade the firmware in my 80Gb Hitachi 5K80 and here's how you do it. I guess you tried to edit the FW.PRO file in order to let it accept firmware upgrade A53A -> A5DA. However, this configuration file is only for FW.EXE which is only a shell for the real flashing program HFUI12L.EXE, the command executed by FW.EXE is "HFUI12L.EXE IA5DA -pm MG4IA5DA.BIN /U MRLA5DA.TBL". If you execute this command from the DOS command prompt you'll see that the upgrade aborts. I did two things, first edit MRLA5DA.TBL, copy the IBM model checksum to OEM generic model, then I executed "HFUI12L.EXE OA5DA -pm MG4IA5DA.BIN /U MRLA5DA.TBL" from command prompt. Notice the difference between the parameters. The flash runs successfully and the firmware version gets updated to A5DA as seen in different utilities. Also, when I started windows, a "new" harddisk was found.
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post #13 of 94
4/7/05 at 5:47am
Hi Henrik:

Thanks for the update, but I don't understand the part "copy the IBM model checksum to OEM generic model". What do you mean with that?

Could you be more specific, please ?

Thanks in advance

Mark
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post #14 of 94
4/7/05 at 6:29am
Quote:
Originally Posted by markplex
Hi Henrik:

Thanks for the update, but I don't understand the part "copy the IBM model checksum to OEM generic model". What do you mean with that?

Could you be more specific, please ?

Thanks in advance

Mark
Edit MRLA5DA.TBL with a text editor. Look for "IBM" and "checksum", Copy the lines to the "OEM" section.
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post #15 of 94
4/7/05 at 7:02am
Hi Henrik:

Thanks for your reply. But there is no IBM or OEM zone. I don't know what text editor you are using. There are only 2 zones "Parameter Table", and "Checksum".

Mark
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post #16 of 94
4/7/05 at 7:55am
Quote:
Originally Posted by markplex
Hi Henrik:

Thanks for your reply. But there is no IBM or OEM zone. I don't know what text editor you are using. There are only 2 zones "Parameter Table", and "Checksum".

Mark

After editing, a part of the file should look like this:

Code:
;-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
; IBM model
;-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
; BIN checksum
5C9C481F
59E1FEF0
E06861C9
5F9E6620
44E01BC4
6EA6221C
;-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
; OEM generic model
;-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
; BIN checksum
5C9C481F
59E1FEF0
E06861C9
5F9E6620
44E01BC4
6EA6221C

Is that clear enough?
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post #17 of 94
4/7/05 at 11:54pm
Thread Starter 
Henrik,
Great job on figuring that out! I haven't really been visiting these forums too often lately because other life commitments have left me with very little free time.

But your post is very promising! Now I must ask you the following questions:

Did upgrading the firmware have any effect on the clicking noise? Does it change the available power management settings?

Thanks again!
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post #18 of 94
4/8/05 at 6:32am
Tomasz,

I can't really tell, because I was never bothered with the noise in the first place. I have a 3.06 HT desktop P4 in my notebook so the fans are on all the time. The reason for me to investigate this matter was not the noise, but some unrelated read performance problems, as described here. As it went, I finally got a Seagate drive instead.

There are no new power management settings or such, the hd behaved just like before. Since the reason for the updated fw is to eliminate the "noise" it might be worth a try if you are really annoyed with it.
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post #19 of 94
4/13/05 at 2:31am
Thread Starter 
Henrik,
I looked into this a bit more. I can't really test the update at the moment because currently my laptop is the only system I have with me and I cannot afford to risk any downtime if something goes wrong (not to mention that I don't have my USB floppy drive with me!). I'll try it out as soon as I get some time off and get access to my desktop systems so that I can do a full backup, etc.

Now I am really interested by what you've done and I have a few questions:
Did you figure out this method by trial and error or did you find some documentation for Hitachi's firmware flashing utility? I tried to look through HFUI12L.EXE quickly with a hex editor but I didn't find anything too useful. Hitachi's tech support pretty much refuses to speak to me and more surprisingly also flat-out ignores my system's integrator (a company that buy lots of OEM drives from Hitachi) concerning any firmware issues.

Anyways, just so that I fully understand: By default, the command that gets passed on by fw.exe is the following:
HFUI12L.EXE IA5DA -pm MG4IA5DA.BIN /U MRLA5DA.TBL

And you changed it to:
HFUI12L.EXE OA5DA -pm MG4IA5DA.BIN /U MRLA5DA.TBL
I assume that the O stands for OEM, while I stands for IBM. But what does the OA5DA parameter do? Does it just tell the flash utility to accept an OEM version drive? Do you remember what error message it gave you while using IA5DA?

This begs the question: does the IBM and OEM version firmware differ significantly? My current firmware is reported as: MG4OA53A; after an update, would it become: MG4IA5DA?

Along the same line, you also edited MRLA5DA.TBL. Do you know what these BIN Checksums refer to? They appear to be CRC32s, but they do not match any of the bin files provided on the firmware update disk. So are these the CRC32s of the firmwares eligible for an update? If so, the fact that your update worked would imply that the IBM and OEM firmwares are identical...

Also, you wouldn't happen to know whether this program supports dumping and backing up the current firmware? The /U parameter is for update...

Well sorry for the barrage of questions and thanks for any answers that you are able to provide. I'll post any of my future experiences in this thread.
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post #20 of 94
4/13/05 at 12:17pm
Tomasz,
I tried an earlier released IBM firmware to see if that one allowed an upgrade. It showed the command line executed by the frontend, when I ran the command manually I could see that the flash got aborted. The editing of the file and the altered command line was just guesses which made sense to me. That combination was actually the first thing I tried and I got really surprised that it worked, kind of boring in a way, since I like to reverse engineer binaries.

The firmware version after flash is reported as MG4IA5DA. Your understanding of the command lines are correct. I don't know in what way the OEM/IBM/Dell firmwares differ, but my guess is it's safe to use them all on a 5k80. I would guess there is some way to extract the current firmware from the drive, but that probably takes some RE to find out.
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