poolcarpet

lol! check this out! http://datacent.com/datarecovery/hdd/seagate/damnseagate This site is ridiculous, just put any s***ty model and the page will be created dynamically with the chosen model, even if the model doesn't exist.

They can do that, I will continue to post to ask people to come here to discuss. Is that in violation of their T&Cs? I'm sick of Sh*tgate's response and handling of this matter to be really honest. Unless they close off my account, I will continue to visit *that* forum and ensure as many people as possible find their way HERE. And may I suggest everyone else who still has a login in that forum do the same. Here we can discuss all the details/technicalities without our posts being deleted/modified and yet the admin claims that no posts of technical content was modified.

Mine's a HP Presario desktop. Motherboard is from ASUS as well, but not sold in stores (sort of OEM between Asus and HP I think).

Based on this, it means my hard disk was manufactured around : 09146 - 6th day of 14th week, which means around 16 or 17 Oct 2008. But I purchased in on 28 October. It only takes 11 days for the hard disk to ship from Thailand factory to the store in Malaysia? Granted that Thailand and Malaysia are neighbouring countries, but still..... 11 days is pretty fast And it looks like I hold the unwanted record of the latest manufactured drive to fail

Keep it going! We have 3 Dec failures, it will be really really suspicious if all our failures are within the same time frame.... we are on a series of 9QM

Anyone knows how to decode date code and site code? e.g. 09146 KRATSG

Why don't we list down and see if we can spot a pattern? I tried starting this back in Sh*tgate forums but they deleted my post! Let's see if we can spot any pattern here...... SerialNumber:Model:P/N:Firmware:DateCode:SiteCode:PurchaseDate:FailedDate:USername =========================================================== 9QM7VZBP:ST3500320AS:9BX154-303:SD15:09146:KRATSG:Oct2008:24Dec2008:poolcarpet --> copy and paste this entire table and add in your entry here

Timebomb? Interesting conspiracy theory. Mine was purchased in Oct 2008, and failed on 24 December 2008. What about the rest??

i wouldn't try this if you still want the data on the hard disk. plus another point to consider, if you run this and brick it, you might not be able to RMA the drive.... so it's double whammy. be very very careful!!!

I'm using it as standalone drive. I don't think it's got to do with RAID. RAID is external to the drive, the drive just communicates with the host which may be the SATA controller or a SATA RAID controller.

Well, they say they can fix: http://www.salvationdata.com/data-recovery...ws0811.htm#1125 and if you download HD Doctor for Seagate and install, and look at the PDF manuals - there are steps given. So I'm quite sure they can fix it. Question is on diagnosis, are we 100% sure our hard disks are all having this BSY + 0 LBA problem and not a real hardware fault?? It is known that hard disks tend to have higher failure rates in the early and later stages of the hard disk's life...

Seagate finally contacted me, and this is their response. Looks like a canned response to me... "Thank you for sending your SEAGATE E-mail inquiry. Unfortunately there is not firmware update your model drive. Would it be possible to see if the drive exhibits the same behavior from another PC? If the drive exhibits the same behavior on a different computers then the drive is faulty and the drive will need to be replaced. To set up an RMA online, please visit our website: http://www.seagate.com. Click on Warranty, then click on Return a drive as guest user. If you would like to call us to get an RMA for your drive, please call our warranty services line at 1-800-732-4283 and choose the option for Product Return Authorization. If you need the data stored in the drive I would advise contacting our data recovery department at 1-800-475-0143. If you have any additional questions, please let me know."

killerB, Salvation Data HD Doctor for Seagate 3.0 is supposed to be able to fix this BSY and 0 LBA problem. It costs USD500. Right now, another option is to look for people in the same region/country/city and lower the cost of the USD500. With enough people, it will be relatively cheaper instead of sending to data recovery companies who will charge and arm and a leg. Then it is good bye Seagate.

Hi all, For those who cannot buy the Schmartboard which Fatlip used (maybe not in US), perhaps you can try to make your own. If you go to http://www.schmartboard.com/index.asp?page...lated&id=84 there is a detailed diagram given. Just grab the parts and make your own, I'm gonna try that at least to confirm if I see the same LED CC error via the terminal.

Wow! if your hard disk is only suffering from the BSY and 0 LBA problem - but yet they give you such diagnosis, that is worst than daylight robbery!!! Question is how to determine if your hard disks (and ours as well) is truly suffering from the BSY and 0 LBA problem and not a real hardware fault. How long did you use your hard disk before it failed and was it subjected to any physical damage???

This was the comment given to me via email. "Because this model 7200.11 having severe firmware problem that we are yet capable to solve yet." The last thing I want is for them to poke around and start swapping PCBs, and potentially wipe out the data. I just want to get it online again to get my data off it, and I'm through with Seagate forever!

Haha, I contacted MDR too but he told me he cannot fix this firmware issue yet. If you are willing to pay RM700-800 to repair this, just 3 of us will be enough to cover the cost of HD Doctor!!! I seriously don't mind buying the HD Doctor, but will need more people who are willing to 'pay' me in return to fix the hard disk using that utility to lower the cost on myself. Win-win for all. I'm sure there are more people out there having this problem. We can easily find 20 I'm sure if we look hard enough. Maybe many people gave up and just RMA-ed the drive. If I charge say RM100 to fix this, would you pay? (Then all I need is to find 16 people and it's all green lights!!) The other advantage of buying the HD Doctor is that if the problem happen again; remember if this is f/w issue and if there is no f/w newer than SD15, what's stopping it from happening again?? Then paying DR companies another $$$$ to fix the same stupid problem?

How many people here are from Malaysia or Singapore and affected by this exact problem? I'm trying to see if we can get enough people to consider 'sharing' the cost of the SD HD Doctor for Seagate.... USD500 for that, with 10 people it will work out to be about US50 per person or less. Cheaper than having each and everyone go buy/make the RS232 and trying trial and error.....

I've asked the price of both PC3000-UDMA and SalvationData HD Doctor for Seagate. The PC3000-UDMA costs close to euro 3000, while the SD costs USD500. However, I'm not sure if the SD one comes with the hardware as well or it's just the software. USD500 is still a lot to me (I bought the dang Seagate 7200.11 for about USD60!!!) so I'm keeping that option as a last resort. Have to find out from them as well whether USD500 is just for the software or the interfaces and hardware components as well. thx fuzzy_3d, It seems to be the best solution to our problem, this video concerns st3500320as with sd15 firmware. Do you the price of this tool ?

You can consider sending a copy of your data to me here, I'll keep them safe half the world away. Should be very very safe... Well, unless an asteroid hits earth........

ToKuRo, So far, I've seen only yourself with F/W SD81..... the rest of us have mainly SD15. Am I the only one until now who have the same no disk at boot error (bsy state) and have an ST3500320AS from Thailand with firmware SD81 (yes i'm sure it is EIGHTYONE). Greetings, ToKuRo.

Anyone dare to try this? (For those that has gone beyond the disk not detected in BIOS, and are stuck in the 0 LBA problem) http://www.salvationdata.com/data-recovery...gate-rapair.htm btw, I checked, that's not a typo, the page html is really spelled that way...

Riderzen, I suppose not, but lightning can strike twice Also, you wouldn't want to put the WD + seagate + flash in the same physical location. For example, if there is water leakage and all three get washed, that's it Do NOT backup anything onto flash media. It's the most volatile of all storage methods. Unless its a micro drive. If I have my photos backed up to the WD, seagate and flash what is the chance I will loose something??? I have used usb memory sticks for years and chucked them around alot and have never lost anything. Oh yeah and I don't want to use the seagate as my main drive because then I would have to reinstall everything...

So it looks like we can resolve the BSY status now. The next step would be to fix the LBA 0 problem, I believe fatlip is working on that. Once we figure this out, we should post this up in public. I really hate it that Seagate is not taking ownership of this clear 'firmware defect' and hate it even more when those data recovery companies want to charge us an arm and a leg for this. I wouldn't mind paying $$ to recover data from hardware failures, but absolutely cannot accept it to pay $$ for some firmware defect.

Hi all, Thanks for the comments on RAID. Agree with some of the points raised. I might use something to sync between the hard disks on a weekly basis rather than RAID 1 itself. Riderzen, Just my thought - what if your WD main HD fails and when you try to use the Seagate to restore, it gets into that stupid BSY state again? Then it's double whammy Maybe it might be better to use the Seagate as main HD and WD as backup?