Styleman

After a few days off, I'm back. Excellent progress from Seagate and especially the group here. Trying to catch up on all the posts. Looks like I'll see my data again after all.

Adding my drive, minus the full serial. By the way, my drive was made in China. 5QJ*****:ST1000340AS:9BX158-303:SD15:09121:WUXISG:October2008:28Dec2008:Styleman

Back on the seagate forum, I have read about a couple cases where the drive seems to be intermittantly detected by the BIOS. Anyone boot up their BSY 7200.11 drive a couple hundred times to see if they can get in? I only need 10 minutes of detection to get back the data I need. The rest is expendible....

My drive is a 1TB Seagate ST1000340AS with the issue of BSY and not detected in BIOS. (My drive is at home, so I need to update the other information later). It was pretty much full though - 900GB out of 931GB in use.

On a more serious note than my previous post.... This isn't one guys fault (Alan M) although it's easy to view it as such. From a legal position, Seagate is better off not admitting they are aware of a problem. This is because if they are aware of a widespread product flaw and not doing anything, this makes them liable. You can bet Seagate trains their front line phone support staff not to take accountability or acknowledge these types of scenarios. Seagate may be holding out to see if only certain production batches are affected before acting. Or maybe they only plan to act if a class action lawsuit rears its ugly head. A class action lawsuit forces a company to live up to their obligations, however in this case, I am not sure what those obligations are. Seagate *is* offering to RMA the drive, and loss of data is generally not their problem in most situations. We are trying to make the data loss Seagate's problem by proving they are continuing to sell a product that is prone to failure in a specific way, leaving their customers vunerable and at a risk level that is much higher than expected. Anyone care to talk to a greedy lawyer to see if we have a solid case? I would think we would need a significant amount of people all with the same issue to convince a lawyer to do anything. The value of the drive is between $70 - $150 and the value of the data restore is about $1000 which may or may not be relevant. The value of company downtime may also play a factor.

http://datacent.com/datarecovery/hdd/seagate/ST31000ASSRAPE

Anyone try this tool once the drive has been cleared of BSY and in a 0 LBA state? http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/200...y-Restore-Tool/ Even if this does work (long shot), I'm not sure what this might do to any data on the drive. User beware.

It looks like Seagate is preparing to sweep 7200.11 under the rug. This doesn't mean our problem will not be resolved, but people seem to be more 'forgiving' of and quickly lose interest in obsolete hardware. Say hello to 7200.12 http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?loca...000f5ee0a0aRCRD

Care to lead the charge? I'll put my name down.... The only problem is that Seagate is not refusing to RMA the drive. Data backups are our responsibility, not Seagate's. Maybe the scare of a lawsuit would be enough for Seagate to act. I keep hearing about a new firmware..... is it real?

If nothing eventful happens with this thread in the next 2 to 3 months, or action taken by Seagate (not holding my breath), I will likely purchase the Salvation Data HD Doctor kit. I would like to be happy to fix other individuals drives as well for a small cost to help reduce my overall cost ($500 USD + shipping) I live in western Canada, so feel free to PM me if this is an option people would like to persue.

Pichi, Thanks for this update. I think these questions you have below should be left on other forums as well. Are you cross posting to other forums? In addition, I wonder if a firmware update from seagate could fix the 0 LBA problem since technically the drive is now visible in the BIOS. (not that I am holding my breath). Of coarse, we also want our data intact which is the reason we have all held on to our drives instead of of sending them for an easy RMA. Speaking of which - is anyone keeping tabs on the seagate site or forum for new developments?

How much was the quote for hardware and software?

I upgraded from my stable 7200.10 Seagate drives to these timebombs. Thats what I get for being greedy with storage I guess.

First off - @ fatlip, thanks for the invite to this thread - I can't wait to hear an update from you when you are ready to present your findings. I think that things will move quickly after this point, although hopefully not too many drives will be lost due to "trial and error" Everyone please remember once fatlip posts his information - the serial controlled terminal window into your HDD is all powerful, and its very easy to mess up any chance of recovering your drive. Secondly @ poolcarpet, I second the motion. I would also like to see this document you refer to. More importantly, has it been verified or tested?