A Sorry Tale of Deskstars & Drive Caddies

[Terry Pin]

This story may also be known as “When In A Hole Stop Digging”

Some weeks ago I added a SATA drive Caddy to my desktop, it already had an EIDE
caddy manufactured buy the same company http://www.icydock.com which I used to
help with system backups and archiving.

One day I installed an IDE drive (Deskstar 250GB) in the caddy booted the PC and
the drive wasn’t recognised, I tried again with a second drive same make and
size and again that wasn’t recognised not even by the BIOS.

Gave up and went to work, came back and tried again this time with my Big Maxtor
(320GB) but n not recognised. Tried again with a smaller 82Gbdrive (same
problem)

Then the ghastly truth dawned on me I’d forgotten that I’d installed the SATA
caddy and had been slotting the EIDE drives in this one by mistake. Tried the
EIDE drive in the proper caddy and it the BIOS didn’t see it, now it really was
shot. Bypassed the caddy housing and connected straight on the cable but no
better. Nearly 1Tb of storage destroyed as a result of my own incompetence
although why the manufacturer didn’t “ key” the drive caddy and it’s housing so
that different types couldn’t be interchanged I’ll never know.

So in a desperate attempt to get the drives up and running just to recover data
on them I thought I’d try and source an identical unit and swap the drive logic
boards. Tried with the Maxtor and Hey Presto it was up and running no problem
and I managed to recover everything.

Then got a new 250gb Deskstar and tried the same with the first duff unit but no
luck, swapped the new board over to the second duff unit but again no luck, put
the new board back on it’s original drive you guessed it this drive could no
longer be seen by the BIOS.

Oh yes I was now the proud owner of 3 duff Hitachi 250Gb Deskstars.

So anyone got any ideas, I can’t afford a professional data recovery service,
the drives spin up OK, with no clicking so I’m sure it’s just the board I’ve
made sure that the model numbers are identical not sure about firmware revs
though, anyone got any clues here?

All help much appreciated

Terry

 

[Arno Wagner]

This story may also be known as “When In A Hole Stop Digging”

Some weeks ago I added a SATA drive Caddy to my desktop, it already
had an EIDE caddy manufactured buy the same company
http://www.icydock.com which I used to help with system backups and
archiving.

One day I installed an IDE drive (Deskstar 250GB) in the caddy
booted the PC and the drive wasn’t recognised, I tried again with a
second drive same make and size and again that wasn’t recognised not
even by the BIOS.

Gave up and went to work, came back and tried again this time with
my Big Maxtor (320GB) but n not recognised. Tried again with a
smaller 82Gbdrive (same problem)

Well, I think you should have stopped and investigated about 3 drives
back....

Then the ghastly truth dawned on me I’d forgotten that I’d installed
the SATA caddy and had been slotting the EIDE drives in this one by
mistake. Tried the EIDE drive in the proper caddy and it the BIOS
didn’t see it, now it really was shot. Bypassed the caddy housing
and connected straight on the cable but no better. Nearly 1Tb of
storage destroyed as a result of my own incompetence although why
the manufacturer didn’t “ key” the drive caddy and it’s
housing so that different types couldn’t be interchanged I’ll never
know.

Actually I would not be so hard on you. The incompetence is the
manufacturers obviously. Not sure what exactly it could have
been, but it almost certainly needs to have been something
with the power connections. If they really managed to make
two caddies that can go into each other slots _but_ have
different power connections, I can only call this an accident
waiting to happen.

The things you can blame yourself for is buying dangerous
equipment form an incompetent manufacturer (hard to find out,
I once spent about a week tracing SATA problems to badly
manufactured PCBs in a hot-swap enclosure. I had bought
3 of them at that time) and not getting suspicious earlier.

Let me re-iterate: If the manufacturer actually made the
SATA housings into IDE deathtraps, most of the blame is
on them for grossly incompetent design.

However you should first make absolutely sure the disks are really
gone by tryong them in a different PC.

So in a desperate attempt to get the drives up and running just to
recover data on them I thought I’d try and source an identical unit
and swap the drive logic boards. Tried with the Maxtor and Hey
Presto it was up and running no problem and I managed to recover
everything.

O.K. if the board-swap did it for the Maxtor then the board
seems indeed to have been shot.

Then got a new 250gb Deskstar and tried the same with the first duff
unit but no luck, swapped the new board over to the second duff unit
but again no luck, put the new board back on it’s original drive you
guessed it this drive could no longer be seen by the BIOS.
Interessting.

Oh yes I was now the proud owner of 3 duff Hitachi 250Gb Deskstars.
Sad.

So anyone got any ideas, I can’t afford a professional data recovery
service, the drives spin up OK, with no clicking so I’m sure it’s
just the board I’ve made sure that the model numbers are identical
not sure about firmware revs though, anyone got any clues here?

Personally I think you should cut your losses. And never buy anyting
from ICY-DOCK again. You can also try to contact them, maybe they
have some bad conscience about their screw-up, but I doubt it.

Arno

 

[Arno Wagner]

P.S.: Stories like this are why I have a close look at everything I
buy that I have not used before. There is just way too much
bad engineering out there.

Arno

 

[J. Clarke]

P.S.: Stories like this are why I have a close look at everything I
buy that I have not used before. There is just way too much
bad engineering out there.

Here's a scary one for you. Was working on a project a while back that
involved dropping a 600,000 pound thrust rocket motor out the back of a
cargo plane, with it firing once it was outside of the plane and a safe
distance away. The kid in charge of designing the control system wanted to
implement the safe-arm entirely in software. The management couldn't see
anything wrong with that.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Arno Wagner wrote:

Here's a scary one for you. Was working on a project a while back that
involved dropping a 600,000 pound thrust rocket motor out the back of a
cargo plane, with it firing once it was outside of the plane and a safe
distance away. The kid in charge of designing the control system wanted to
implement the safe-arm entirely in software. The management couldn't see
anything wrong with that.

Cool. I think this qualifies as a reason for an emergency job-change.
I hope the software-"designer" (I am unwilling to call such an obvious
incompetent an engineer...) was in the plane when the thing was tested.

Arno

 

[J. Clarke]

Cool. I think this qualifies as a reason for an emergency job-change.
I hope the software-"designer" (I am unwilling to call such an obvious
incompetent an engineer...) was in the plane when the thing was tested.

Fortunately for me I was the number-cruncher for a subcontractor--it would
be surprising if I ever even _saw_ the thing other than on film. Just a
coincidence that I was present in the meeting at which that part of the
design concept was discussed. By the time I was done all involved _did_
see the problem and it was agreed, among other things, that the kid got to
ride with it. The prime wasn't too happy about a sub pointing out a major
problem with his design, but once he read the relevant specs (how it
happened that I had copies of them but he didn't I'll never figure out) he
was ecstatic that it had been pointed out before he showed it to the Army.