MP9000 hard drive errors

[cobiray]

Here's the back story; with the recent media attention over the last 12 months or so to data security in office equipment, we've been giving our customers the opportunity to have the drives out of their old machines pulled and either returned to them or disposed with a cert of destruction. We had a customer upgrade and we were unavailable to get drives for the machines to go back on lease so we pulled the drives out of our MP9000 in the office and sent it back. So, we finally get the drives in (non Ricoh) and another tech throws them in the machine and it throws sc672 hard. No tech mode, no open door, nothing. We sent the drives back and got new ones with the same result. I pulled the drives and formatted them with a usb dongle on my laptop (Windows 7) and put them back in the machine. Now I'm getting sc860, sc872 and sc925.

I'm unable to format the drives in the machine at this point and I'm wondering if there is more to the HDD's in the production machines? I've never had any issues with a Windows formatting with the business machines or replacing them with non Ricoh drives. Anyone else have any problems with a similar situation??

[Choro1dal]

You can get similar faults with HDDs that have been reformatted to DoD/NSA spec without using DOS (Data Overwrite Security.)
This may sound like a typical tech's get out, but have you tried rewriting the firmware to the MFD? (Not all firmware files reside on the controller/peripherals). Once all the files have been rewritten you should be able to reboot, access service mode and repartition/format the drives using SP mode.

[cobiray]

No, I haven't updated the firmware since the drives were pulled/replaced. I'll give that a try on Monday. I wondered if there wasn't something on the drives that the machine required, but I hadn't thought about doing a firmware update.

I have swapped in drives with another machine and the symptom follows the drives and the machine boots to ready with the other drives installed, so the issue is definitively the drives. I will give the firmware update a whirl on Monday and report back.

[cobiray]

I've updated the firmware on the machine to the D101 firmware using the appropriate steps found in TSB046 (system & engine together followed by all others individually) with no change in symptoms. I'm still getting the SC925, SC972 and SC860 cycling at the bottom of the screen. So I entered tech mode to attempt to format the drives with the same failed result on all except 5-832-002 is successful. I'm ready for another suggestion....

The only other thing I can think is that the drives are the same size and part number, but not the identical model number and the sectors are different. Are we the only company pulling drives and replacing them with non Ricoh parts to save money or are others doing this same thing? What procedures do you follow for field replacement of these drives? Again, I've never had an issue with this on any of the business machines, so I assume the production machines are a bit different.

[chaunce54]

Could be a matched set? If that is the case, you may have to order directly from Ricoh instead of using off the shelf HDDs. They should work in most machines, but there could be an issue in machines with matched sets.

[cobiray]

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by matched set. The drives that are in it are identical drives, but they are different than the ones that work from another machine (same size and part number as other drive set, but different sectors and model number). I'm trying to determine if there are already files on the drives when you get them from Ricoh. Also, what format are the drives in? I know it's not windows based so I'm assuming Linux? Anyone have any way of looking at whats on the drives with a Windows or Mac?

[teebee1234]

They are specially formatted from Ricoh, not sure if anyone has successfully formatted an off the shelf set.

[johnyb]

I've had this issue..
The problem is the drives themselves are non compatible with Ricoh, you'll find that something will be different when you compare the new (Un genuine) with OEM HDD's, something such as cache, number of sectors, RPM speed etc.
I've found it is hit and miss if non OEM will work when they are paired up in a raid system, however if you fit non OEM HDD's in machines that only need the one, they work fine!

[iMind]

[ucinn]

We use regular drives also.. I did have a problem once and it was with the jumpers on the drive being on the wrong setting. I believe I had to change them both to master.

[cobiray]

We use regular drives also.. I did have a problem once and it was with the jumpers on the drive being on the wrong setting. I believe I had to change them both to master.

SATA drives don't use the master/slave switches. There is only one drive per channel (single cable per single drive) so there is no need to determine master/slave relationship. Looks like I'm going to need some drives from Ricoh...

[iMind]

[cobiray]

Sorry, I was using drive and disk interchangeably. I meant that each SATA disk drive has it's own cable and it's not shares like IDE disk drives so there is no need to differentiate with master/slave switches.

[kingpd@businessprints.net]

Re: MP9000 hard drive errors

Did you ever figure this out? I'm curious if the Ricoh ones worked and why the non-oem ones wouldn't.