That second Fujitsu reminds me of the failure mode some Caviar 100/200/300/400BBs would have where they will slam the arm around due to a bad head amp. Some would also overheat and burn up some diodes or the motor driver. Combine that with the sealed off design of most early 2000s cases and most of those would cook and fail to electrical faults rather than the heads or media itself. The motors also burned out quite a bit (Maxtors from this time also had these problems) and get super bad bearings to the point they didn't spin up fully, or sometimes the windings would just short out and the drive would try to constantly "unstick" the motor.
@cdos9186
3 ай бұрын
Wow that is quite the story! Oddly enough, when installing a WD400BB-53AUA1 awhile ago it did just that. Same thing where it would just slam the actuator around loudly. When I took it out of the case, it worked just fine again, and the drive was still perfect in health. What I figured out was the Pentium III HP I was trying to install it in had the drive cage so tight, that you had to force the drive in and it would short the PCB on the cage. Just an awful design from HP and it ended up scratching the heck out of the label on the top of that perfect drive, so I am still super mad about that. I guess it was supposed to have a slimline drive installed in it from the factory since it didn't come with a drive when I got it and just picked something era appropriate for it. I've personally never gotten a Western Digital with a shorted motor or cooked PCB, but I'm sure it won't be long before I do with how many Western Digital drives I pick up!
@averyoldYoutubeuser
3 ай бұрын
@@cdos9186 So interesting that a drive cage can short the PCB on the cage, thankyou for your information
@cdos9186
2 ай бұрын
@@averyoldKZitemuser Yeah it is a bad design on some cases, especially HP and Compaq. It can happen on any cage, but HP and Compaq just seems like they make their drive cages an extremely tight fit. If the metal touches the PCB...well it shorts things out. Really is annoying what manufacturer's do sometimes...
@longrunner258
2 ай бұрын
It's a shame too as aside from Seagate's experimental scorching-hot Medalist Pro 9140, Fujitsu was the first to offer FDB motors (the MPG3204AH here spins almost as quietly as a Barracuda ATA IV, and even some MPF models had the option). At least there are still a reasonable number of surviving MPFs (probably because the epoxy formula was changed midway through the MPF's production, so late MPFs were bad but earlier units OK). The MPE and MPF series did overlap in production (I have an MPE3064AT and MPE3084AE from February and May 2000 respectively, both working).
@arnlol
3 ай бұрын
I guess I'm lucky that my 5400RPM 20GB one still works even though it has a few reallocated sectors. I have another one that I got in one of these "bad" lots that does the exact same as these though, the two slight tick tick from the motor and nothing else, which is in my pile of drives with bad PCBs. It's a bummer that the last 3.5 consumer drives Fujitsu made at that time ended up being ones that were bad
@cdos9186
3 ай бұрын
I'm so glad that your drive still works. I wonder when testing it how long you have it powered on for, I extensively test mine for hours before concluding them good. That probably doesn't help when the electronics get very hot and stay that way for awhile on a drive known for PCB problems. Really sad the way these fail. I believe that the lawsuit against Fujitsu and the failure rates were enough to kill the hard drive division of Fujitsu just like what happened to IBM, at least mostly in terms of consumer drives as Fujitsu did still make SATA 2.5" drives. Unfortunate to realize that IBM and Fujitsu had lawsuits and high failure rates for their drives that was enough to be the nail in the coffin for them both, but at least Fujitsu stuck around for a bit longer but pretty much gave up on 3.5" consumer drives.
@KliaTech
3 ай бұрын
I have Fujitsu MPG3204AT. The IC chip still works!!!
@cdos9186
3 ай бұрын
I would love to know how many hours your drive has on it and also the health! All of the one's I have used worked fine until they didn't. I don't have a good feeling any of these will last because they work great then they suddenly stop working and never work reliably again.
@TheDragonFire123
3 ай бұрын
Such a shame there isn't much we can do to bring these back to life; after all, you can replace TVS diodes, but not MCUs...
@cdos9186
3 ай бұрын
It really is saddening that they fail so commonly. The good thing is at least there are still plenty of these left, but the 30GB and 40GB models are quite rare however. I assume the higher end models didn't sell as well either, and that combined with they probably failed more often due to the extra heat they generated. I wonder how many of these will be left with working PCBs as so many of them go bad and when they work they don't seem to work for long before they short-circuit like this. Given the lawsuit Fujitsu had against them and the number of announced affected drives, the best way to keep these working probably is to use them barely if at all and don't let them heat up much. Not like the one's for sale are going to work either unfortunately even if they are for sale still. They may forever remain bricks...
@matthewsvideos8235
3 ай бұрын
I lost my Fujitsu drives also, but to bad sectors and other data faults. Sad to see yours with board issues or stiction.
@cdos9186
3 ай бұрын
None of these drives ever had any issues with stiction. The coating that Fujitsu used on them was very good. The media however is somewhat on the lower quality side for some but that just might be because a lot of them sat for a long time unpowered, or the IC shorted and then the drive doesn't spin of course. Out of a total of five, four had the PCBs burned out or died while using them. I do agree that media can be an issue on these as that was the issue I had with the MPG3204AH that I mentioned in the description.
@windisk1112
28 күн бұрын
Guess what, LOT came early. Results already in.
@cdos9186
25 күн бұрын
SUPER SLAMMING PACKAGING
@fsfs555
3 ай бұрын
Too bad I didn't see this before I bought a few of them! Haha. Seriously though apparently there was a class-action lawsuit in Canada due to the failures. It's another example of an electronics fault killing a disk (Quantum's Fireball TM drives often had similar failures due to a Philips chip, and some late-model Seagate Barracudas had firmware errors that eventually bricked them if they weren't updated). Fujitsu's desktop consumer drives were never stellar but these were a definite low point and probably a big reason they left that market. But, if I ever get around to editing and posting them, I recently recorded a couple attempts to test some of these. Spoiler: they're all dead.
@cdos9186
3 ай бұрын
Yeah these were most certainly a reason they stopped making consumer 3.5" drives. It certainly hurt their pockets due to the RMAs and how many people complained, and then less customers. So they finally hit the hammer on the 3.5" drives mostly. I did put most of the information in the description about what happened and links to the details of the failure on these, so hopefully more people realize these are not drives to collect or use in any vintage system. I thought the spindle motor IC fault was only on the Fireball ST and CR drives? I don't recall the TM drives being affected by that issue where the chip can go into thermal runaway and blow up... I do feel that Fujitsu did try the best they could, but they didn't really keep up too well in terms of competition in my opinion. Always the same general HDA style, with a couple changes here or there, but they kept it simple. Their SCSI stuff was really where all the attention went I feel. That's a shame they are all dead but that is no surprise, I am still trying to collect them before eventually they become rare...and sadly, the 30GB and 40GB MPGs are already scarce and are hard to find : (
@aspinx
3 ай бұрын
@@cdos9186 Were there any typical errors of Fireball TM drives? I have one that doesn't detect - it spins up, then makes a clicking sound with its head and spins down. After few tries the led starts blinking 8 times. I wonder if it's a known issue or anything could be done about it?
@zzco
3 ай бұрын
Oooof, that sounds about right for those drives.
@cdos9186
3 ай бұрын
Yeah what is most saddening is how the MPG3204AH that was perfect (S.M.A.R.T showed as "Bad" because the power on hours were over 3 years) ended up having the PCB go bad as well! I regard these worse than any other drive because without the electronics working right, the drive is a brick...I would highly go against getting any of these unless it is for historic purposes I suppose, they just won't last unless you want to keep replacing the PCB every week with another one when the Cirrus Logic IC shorts out : ((
@toddb930
3 ай бұрын
Do you have any Fujitsu 2.5" hard drives?
@cdos9186
2 ай бұрын
I don't have that many, but I have a few. I have a MHT2040AT, MHV2060AH, and MHV2080AH. There is a video on the MHV2060AH if you are curious, but since the MHV2080AH is the same drive with more capacity, I didn't make a video on that one.
@toddb930
2 ай бұрын
@@cdos9186 -- Fujitsu set up a design center in the US in the late 80's to design a 2.5" hard drive. Then they shut the design center down n 1993. In hindsight it was done so they could access US technology in heads and disks. They manufactured those first 2.5" drives in Yamagata Japan.
@bigbluebananabread
3 ай бұрын
Excellent coverage of this disastrously terrible series! It's really sad to see the entire experience you've had with these, but I guess it isn't all that surprising. Seriously worse than the 75GXP's, so I commend Fujitsu for creating something so terrible (well, I guess Sumitomo Bakelite are the bigger contributer to the failures). How sad... I wish you the best of luck with finding one that you can verify is perfect before shoving in a box and forgetting about it forever! Maybe that's not as fun though.
@cdos9186
3 ай бұрын
Thanks! I feel like someone had to finally show video of how these drives fail. There just was nothing I could find in terms of footage of how these drives die, just tons of descriptions and such. The experience isn't just my own from the thousands upon thousands of customers that had these drives fail them. I generally seem to have good luck with unreliable drives, but these are just on another level of a total disaster to get working. Once they go bad, there isn't really anything you can do except replace the PCB with another one that will fail the same way very likely in a short period of time. I tried baking the bad PCBs in the oven and it did absolutely nothing at all to help, so these truly are drives that are done for once the PCBs fail. So sad the story of these and I feel bad for the customers that had to deal with them and lose data... I won't give up yet! I'll try and pick up a few more and see how that goes....but the fact that I got two (MPG3204AT and MPG3204AH #2) that appeared to work fine at first only to fail within a few hours of use is depressing to experience. I don't think these are drives to collect and I don't recommend them to anybody unless you just want one for the fact it is a part of a piece of history with a huge story behind it...but any of these whether tested and working or untested just seems like they will end up failing. I still can't believe all five examples that I have touched are bad. So 5/5 failures with four having the PCB die by itself is just on another level of avoid this at all costs! I do wonder if the one with physical damage had any chance of working, but I almost guarantee that the MCU on that one is shorted too even if I somehow managed to fix all the damaged traces on it. Not only that, but the thought of how long it has been sitting. Also something to think about - both 40GB drives can literally still have data on them. I have zero clue if they are mechanically sound or not! No joke!
@vintage_enthusiast09
3 ай бұрын
Hey its me again, today i found an old PC at my school thats getting dumped and i picked up its hard drive. An Seagate U8 ST38410A, i accidentally dropped the drive while picking it up. When i powered up the drive it started making weird clicking and sort of a scratching sound, I thought its dead so i took it apart and saw the top head crashed at parking area. After putting it back i power cycled it a few times and it suddenly started seeking and idle fine!
@cdos9186
3 ай бұрын
That's sad, I would've taken the whole PC haha. Shame you dropped the drive, that definitely didn't help and that hurts to hear considering how fragile drive are. The damage that resulted was probably from the heads getting damaged and contacting the platters that resulted in the drive crashing. Since the heads park in the parking area, enough abuse can cause them to crash in that area when the drive is powered on again. It may idle fine but who knows how well the drive actually works, maybe enough to be somewhat useable? Sometimes drives die shortly after being abused and not always immediately though...
@vintage_enthusiast09
3 ай бұрын
@@cdos9186 I didn't take the pc because it was already scrapped its just the case and motherboard left and nothing else. Oh well when i picked up that drive it was wet thus i wasn't able to hold it, It was a rainy day so everything got wet. You are right..... the drive didn't last long, i dont have an pc that uses IDE so i decided to let it idle for a while. And it started making loud grinding sound after being left idle.
@zzco
3 ай бұрын
lol, "FUNITSU" -- it's misreporting its SMART status.
@cdos9186
3 ай бұрын
The main controller on the drive, the Cirrus Logic IC, is responsible for reporting the information to the controller. If it reports back garbage, the system will believe what it is being told as that is what is coming from the drive. The actual firmware on the platters is likely just fine, but when the host asked for the drive ID that is what got reported because the Cirrus Logic IC was shorting out lol.
@zzco
3 ай бұрын
lol, yup- that's why I was kinda poking fun at it :p
@zzco
3 ай бұрын
and what else is the system to believe? I mean, especially for ye olde BIOS systems, lol. I'm working on picking up a working 486 motherboard, so I can partake in ISA and Windows 3.x/95 goodness, lol.
@cdos9186
3 ай бұрын
@@zzco Best of luck with getting that working if you do! Might need some repairs of course but shouldn't be too bad hopefully. It definitely is a fun experience using an older system!
@zzco
3 ай бұрын
@@cdos9186 It was apparently "pulled from a working environment".
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