SE Switched-tampered with PCB?

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

I bought a used enterprise 3TB SE drive and one of the first things I noticed is it has a locking latch which they do not have.

The PCB does not look like the 4TB version, I can’t find a picture of the 3TB to compare.

What stood out though is the firmware is 80.00A80, that is the firmware for RED’s.

Not surprisingly the drive benches what a RED does and not what a SE should, it’s a good 25mb/s slower in

both reads and rights with HDtune.

The drive was made June 2013.

If the PCB was switched out then it’s unlikely the 30 hours are false and it has much more.

I can send it back for a refund but I must confirm if the SE line ever had firmware 80.00A80 or if they all

have _ 01.01A01. _

_   _

Thanks

2

Hello,

Try using WD DLG in order to obtain the serial number on the drive and see if it matches the serial number on the label. To verify if the PCB was in fact changed.

3

Swapping a PCB in a modern WD drive will most probably not work. This is because each PCB stores unique drive specific information in serial flash memory.

You can determine the number of heads using HD Tune.

See http://malthus.zapto.org/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=650

You can match the manufacturing date on the label against the date codes on the PCB and on the chips. To this end, could you upload a detailed photo of the component side of the PCB?

You could also input the serial number into WD’s warranty checker:
http://websupport.wdc.com/warranty/warrantycheck.asp?custtype=end

There are other numbers on the label that could help identify the drive, eg the full model number (including suffix), the DCX number, the R/N number. There should also be a 2061-xxxxxx sticker on the PCB which should correspond to a 2060-xxxxxx number on the artwork, and this number should relate to the R/N on the label.

The width of the HD Tune access time graph should tell you the RPM of the drive. The access time graph for a 7200RPM drive will have a width of 8.33ms whereas that of a 5400RPM drive will be 11ms wide.

See http://community.wd.com/t5/Desktop-Mobile-Drives/Is-this-a-genuine-or-fake-WD-drive/td-p/224428

4

Both drives check out fine under warranty till almost 2019.

HD tune the access time was 16.3ms on both Intel and Marvell which is higher then I’ve seen on bench tests.

They were also slower and closer to red speeds on HDtune read/write.

The main question is are any SE drives using the firmware of reds, that would deterime if the PCB was swapped out because from pictures it looks like the one from reds and not the SE.

A picture I took, this just simply does not look right and both drives I bought have that square black tape on them.

Note they both have locking SATA connectors and they should NOT have them.

SEpcb.jpg