GE Lightspeed 64: physician workstation boot drive failure
What happened
On a GE Lightspeed 64 CT, the boot drive of the HP 8600 physician workstation failed. The original drive is a SAS HP MBA3147RC mounted on a SAS-to-SATA adapter.
What was checked
- The engineers confirmed the fault was in the workstation boot drive: a SAS HP MBA3147RC sitting on a SAS-to-SATA adapter.
- They discussed replacing the failed SAS drive with a standard SATA SSD instead of hunting down the same SAS model.
Cause
Failure of the workstation's system boot drive.
What was done
In this case the failed SAS drive was replaced with a standard SATA SSD connected directly to a SATA port on the motherboard, so the SAS-to-SATA adapter was no longer needed. The workstation came back up, and the swap was reported as successful. Restoring the system software on such a workstation is done per the manufacturer's service documentation.
Safety
Power down and disconnect the workstation before opening it for the drive swap, and complete the electrical safety checks required for the medical device before returning the CT to clinical use.
Lesson: When an obsolete SAS boot drive fails on a scanner workstation, a standard SATA SSD can be a practical replacement as in this case, but first confirm interface compatibility and rebuild the system per the manufacturer's documentation.
Covered in the course: CT Service — Level 2: Fault-Finding →
Written from an anonymised case shared by service engineers. It is not a manufacturer instruction and grants no authorisation. Independent note; names are trademarks of their owners.