fatlip

I was banned. Apparently they said I was soliciting people through "PRIVATE Messages" to come to this forum..... I could understand if I was spamming someone to go somewhere to make money. Apparently Seagate has no idea what Private means. Anyways, I only sent people messages that either contacted me, or showed interest in finding a solution. This clearly states that they have a big problem with msfn.org, not only that they are censoring links to this site sent in private messages. read the part about: "You're welcome to offer to PM people about your site..." This is my site as far as I am concerned. Who gives a s*** if I didn't open my own forum(which I was going to do until it got moved here). Nowhere in here mentions that they received complaints, etc. Here is a transcript of my message to Alan and the reply. Also, I lied and started posting using "piltaf" after I didn't receive a response after 48 hours. This was only because I know that my message was read shortly after I sent it. A message I left last night after seeing the new firmware bricking drives was quite comical and all the best parts were removed by mods (gee, that's a surprise). I told them that there should be at least 10 new Engineering positions open tomorrow, and to start with their VP of Engineering. Anyways, I don't remember it all, but it was all pointed at Seagate incompetence. Alan, I am not sure if you were the one who banned me or not, however, as a Customer of Seagate and a contributor to this forum, not to mention the top Kudoed author, I would like some answers. If not from you, whoever made the decision to ban my account. According to my login, We're sorry, but you have been banned from using this site. * You have been banned for the following reason: Continuous violation of the Seagate Community rules and regulations. I have just went through every single post I have made on the forums, and have found ONE single message that was ever edited by a moderator. On top of that, I discussed, with you, the reason it was edited and that was fine with me. Since the shutdown of the the now infamous "Falling Down" thread, I have made a total of 3 posts, all which referenced back to your own board. None were edited by mods, commented on by mods or anything. So specifically I would like to know: The date I was banned. The specific instances that constitute "Continuous violation of the Seagate Community rules and regulations" with the exception of the post mentioned above. How does 1 edited post out of 38 constitute "Continuous"? By my dictionary this means "without cessation", which is clearly not the case. I have the suspicion that this was probably not your call, but came from someone higher up in the food chain. I also suspect that I/we were starting to make the issues discussed in the forum a little too public for Seagate's liking. Since I know that this account will probably get banned as well, now that you know who I am, whoever made this decision can contact me directly via e-mail at xxxx@xxxx.xx. On a side note, I will not be posting any messages on the Seagate forum using this account. This is strictly to communicate with you. Regards, Greg AKA: Fatlip Hello fatlip: You were banned, as far as I can tell, on 08Jan09. The reason is that it was determined that you were sending numerous PMs to other users soliciting them to go to another, third-party forum, rather than because of your public postings, in which you were reasonably compliant to our policies. This is in violation of our rules: Our forum is provided as a service to our users and customers and is not intended for the promotion of third party services, products, websites, or organizations. Please do not post advertisements, junk mail, spam, chain letters, charity requests, petitions for signatures or any other form of solicitation... If a violation occurs, Seagate may remove content and restrict access to our forum. Seagate does not generally edit content posted by participants in our forum. However, Seagate retains the right, at its sole discretion, to limit your access to our forum and to remove material posted by you that, in Seagate's sole judgment, does not comply with our policies or that we otherwise deem to be inappropriate for our forum. Look, there is little that I can do in this situation but convey information as I receive it and enforce the rules of this forum. I understand that I and others on the moderator team look like the badguy because we enforce the rules and look like we're trying to suppress something. I think an honest look at the posts that have remained on the forum will quickly disabuse anyone of that notion. It's just that the posts that were edited and deleted violated the rules, the rules that users must sign and agree with before they gain posting privileges. In your case, I had specifically said this in a PM to you: "You're welcome to offer to PM people about your site..." I did not, however, know that the site to which you were referring users was the well-known MSFN forum thread. You did not make that clear, and I was led to believe that you had created a personal site of some kind (like fatlip.wordpress.com or something). So anyway, we have decided that you may continue to post under piltaf, and fatlip will remain banned. Please feel free to post, and please post within the forum guidelines at all times. If you have any questions or concerns, you may PM me or any other moderator. Publicly questioning moderation policy will not be tolerated. Best Regards, AlanM Moderator

Hey all, I have a "friend" from these boards coming over tomorrow with a bricked drive. I will get him to film the process and I'll post a video. It should make things much clearer to everyone as to the "power on/off", when and how long etc. If you are unsure of what you are doing, STOP NOW and wait. It will be worth it. Check back around 7PM MST Wednesday Jan 21st. Thanks, Fatlip

Also make sure you have Flow Control OFF! So connect everything, power the drive up open hyperterminal-->connect and hit CTRL+Z - if you don't see the F3 T> prompt, something isn't right with your hookup.

I think you have a bigger problem than just the LBA=0 problem. I don't know for sure, but that doesn't look good. Wanna hear something funny? Seagate's forums are censoring links to this forum. I sent someone a private message with a link to this board and the "www.msfn.org/board" is being stripped. I sent a test message with a link to google and it worked just fine!!!! Here is what the link here looks like: http://_____.php?act=ST&f=5&t=128807

You need to be extremely careful. Copy the commands EXACTLY as on this forum. You may have pooched your drive already by simply sending the wrong command. If you are Seeing The LED: 000000CC FAddr: 00XXXXXX Follow the Fixing BSY or CC errors aka BUSY first!!!! ,,,, MEANS ,,,, NOT ,0,0,0, Take your time and read thoroughly!!!

Alright peeps, I am going to try and help Gradius out by deflecting some of these questions. He has done more than enough. So feel free to PM me with these types of questions..... Disolid; You have a terminal session successfully. What you need to do is, disconnect power, unscrew the Circuit board from the Hard Drive Assembly case Completely using a mini TORX T6 screw driver. Connect the power to the PCB card, send a CTRL+Z to get a terminal session again, Then run the commands up to: F2 T> F2 T>/2 F2 2>Z Spin Down Complete Elapsed Time 0.147 msecs (the time will vary here) F3 2> Now WITH THE POWER STILL CONNECTED: screw the PCB board back on (CAREFULLY) and continue the instructions. The more you play around in the terminal, the more likely you are to pooch your drive for good. Thanks, G

Not that I want to toot my own horn, but I spent many many many hours researching and spreading the word, especially in the original Seagate forum, spreading the news of this bug to PC review companies and review forums etc. I am just glad we found the answer!!!!!! BTW: PICHI messaged me, and the fix of the LBA=0 worked for him. We both put in a lot of collaborative time together and I am glad he was able to recover his data. Thanks all! G

Definitely for the hard drive not being recognized in the BIOS. Worked exactly as expected. Popped the drive back in his machine and the RAID array rebuilt.... all good. Great!, this means this guide is correct, right ? Gradius hs_ I have hooked up 5 or 6 drives this way using 5V from the power supply.. no problems. G

This was just announced on Friday, so I doubt anyone has used the "free" option yet.

Alright everyone. The BUSY state REMOVAL WORKS PERFECTLY! As I suspected, my friends drive was locked in BUSY state. 3 minutes (and some careful placement of the PCB board) I successfully unlocked the drive. This drive does not have an LBA=0 issue, so I was not able to try that. Thanks, Fatlip

Data lost or okay there should be no data loss. This is writing to the System Area of the hard drive.

I just want to thank MSFN for allowing all of us disgruntled Seagate users to move our discussion from the Gestapo run Seagate forum to here. We have finally reached our goal, with the help of a lot of people, and a lot of hours, to find an at home solution to un-brick these drives without paying $1000's of dollars to DR companies, or RMA'ing our drives and losing all of our data. I am positive that the size of the threads, and the number of views/and active users looking at the threads at one time, not only brought major attention to Seagate, but also put the pressure on them to come up with a reasonable remedy. They finally did, and ironically one of our members found the complete fix the same day. Thanks Again! Fatlip

I have a drive on the way here now to see 100% if this works. It should be here within the hour. G

Hey all, The fix was released on a website for those of you with the RS-232 connection. See Gradius' post. From reading it, this should work. I have taken the PCB board off my drive possible 50-60 times without incident, but be extremely careful when unscrewing and screwing it back on with the power connected!!!! Thanks, G

Depends on my friends drive. I should be getting it today.

Here is what has been said so far. The NEW firmware won't be available until around Tuesday. The NEW firmware WILL NOT unbrick your drive if it is already in a status where it is not being detected in the BIOS Seagate will offer Free Recovery Service for a drive that is already bricked with this issue. (According to the official statement) The only people that the firmware update will help is people with existing working drives, that being said, make sure you backup prior to doing any firmware update.

DOH!!!!

SUCCESS!!!!! Way to go all. We knew that the negative publicity would eventually cause Seagate to react! PS: anyone want this RS-232 connection that I don't need any more? LOL

Oh the irony. So I haven't posted anything on Seagate's site for quite awhile, just logged on every once in awhile to check PM's. Out of the blue: We're sorry, but you have been banned from using this site. * You have been banned for the following reason: Continuous violation of the Seagate Community rules and regulations. Now, I had a discussion with AlanM about a post I made, and we sorted it out. Since then the most I did, was point other users back to our original "Falling Down" thread on the Seagate forum... Laughable! So let's get this straight, I was the #1 users for Kudos on the site, probably helped more people than Seagate's moderators and support combined, and I get banned? You guys have some balls. I mean, if they want the heat turned up even more, I am more than willing to put more effort into it... Way to go $eagate, you are proving once again that you are trying to cover this up the best you can. Since I know that Seagate mods are probably perusing this board, I welcome them to PM me with the date I was banned, and specific "continuous violations" you speak of. There may have been 2 posts, one asking people to PM me for something, and another for using a cuss word.. ****Funny, I just went through every single post and I only had ONE posted message edited****

You can look around for HEX commands that can be sent, but to my knowledge, every fix needs a serial connection to the drive.

Laz, Where do you live? G

Hi All, Let's be clear here. We have already narrowed this down to SD15 firmware. The size of the drive varies. You are all beating a dead horse. We established this in the Seagate forum that was closed, and it wouldn't surprise me if the relevant posts have been deleted. I have a friend that has one of these drives that is now displaying these symptoms that I can use as a new donor drive... (Thanks RAID5 technology!) It is sad when this is becoming so widespread that your immediate friends are having the same failures.. :| Seagate has a serious problem, and as we collectively keep the pressure on, they will have no choice but to acknowledge the issue or face a lawsuit. Both will be equally expensive. The simple fact here is that 2 of the major recovery software/hardware vendors have developed a specific fix for this problem, points to a MAJOR fault in the product. G

AWESOME!!

YEP!!

Hoggiee, download Victoria for Windows. There is a link on this thread from Pichi. When you select the drive, the drive light will stay BUSY at the bottom. That is an easy way to tell.