quattro150

It worked, it worked!!! Picked up where I left off last time after fixing the BSY problem... only needed 2 more commands after that. Clear G-List, then Format Partition, and I was good to go... Now backing up all my files to the new WD I just bought... taking forever... Let's see if any of the files got damaged by this whole episode, I hope not... Now what am I gonna do with this brick? Thank you EVERYBODY for making this fix public...!!! woo hooo....

Excellent!!! I'll try it once I get home from work today.... *keeping fingers crossed*

*sigh* it sez mine is not affected... bull crap... i punched in a few others on the list, and I noticed that most of the drives before aug/sept show up as not affected, and the later one are affected... just a coincidence? or are they trying to minimize the damage by only limiting this to a few ranges of S/N?

Just a thought... instead of trying to crack the password, is anyone on the forums well versed enough with low level Windows device driver stuff, such that they can write an ATA sniffer to see what commands are being sent from the HDDoctor software? Perhaps that's another way to get at the solution... at least that one is proven, whereas this one may or may not be real... Just a thought... ...this is all assuming the password is actually a WORD. A true brute force would take a few decades. Yeah, I doubt it's a word, especially one using English characters. I'll bet it's a Chinese character set which would take eons since they have well over 3000 characters in traditional. It would definitely be killer if someone could find a GPU powered solution. I've got two 8800GTX's in SLi (I miss 3DFX).

I've tried asking SalvationDATA if they had cheaper solution or even group discounts, unfortunately they don't.... heck, I wouldn't too, if I were them, seeing that they are the ONLY commercial solution that is even remotely affordable.... I'm surprised they don't even increase it just because of this issue... Anyway, fuzzby, it looks like you're doing a great service for the folks up in Canada... I know this may be too much to ask (and maybe even bordering on breaking some copyright or IP laws), but perhaps you could help this forum by looking at what's going on in the serial ports... I'm sure someone on this forum can make an adapter that you could use to peek into the serial port activity... that would certainly speed up our efforts here to come up with a solution... just a thought, and I fully understand if you or others don't think it's a good idea... it is, after all, some form of stealing.... Like you, I am willing to pay some amount to recover my data, but USD500 is still rather steep....

leaving PC on may not help... I think someone on the thread had his cuda fail while powered on...

No virus here, not that I know of anyway. Could it be a coincidence? Since folks who are scouring the forums now are those whose drives had just recently died. Folks whose drives died earlier have probably moved on and put this whole episode behind them, perhaps?

Oooh, looks like they inherited Maxtor's reliability... or the other way around? Either way, I'm gonna start looking around to see if I can dig out more info on the Maxtor drive than on the Seagate drive... perhaps there are more similarities that we could make use of...

Probably is, but I still can't help to wonder if something in the chipset is causing this problem to crop up. By the way, your GIGABYTE EP45 uses ICH10 as well... may not be an ASUS problem, but maybe an Intel problem still...

Ooops, just checked my receipts, I actually did buy it in Apr. 12th to be exact. ****, only 2 days from factory to store... **** things were selling like hot cakes... 9QM7VZBP:ST3500320AS:9BX154-303:SD15:09146 (09/Oct/2008):KRATSG:Oct2008:24Dec2008:poolcarpet 9QM6X90B:ST3500320AS:9BX154-303:SD15:09115 (17/Sep/2008):KRATSG:Oct2008:28Dec2008:DaftMule 9QM6W2JE:ST3500320AS: - :SD15: - : - :5Dec2008:19Dec2008:DerSnoezie 9QM4G4PK:ST3500320AS:9BX154-303:SD15:08503 (16/Jun/2008):KRATSG:Aug2008:Nov2008:dskbrk 9QM3RWHJ:ST3500320AS:9BX154-568:SD81:08464 (20/May/2008):KRATSG:Aug2008:23Dec2008:ToKuRo 9QM7KSQJ:ST3500320AS:9BX154-501:SD15:09134 (30/Sep/2008):KRATSG:28Oct2008:07Jan2009:jeroen__online 9QM2MFS6:ST3500320AS:9BX154-303:SD15:08406 (10/Apr/2008):KRATSG:12Apr2008:23Dec2008:quattro150

3 Asus's so far in the lot... doesn't look good... mine's using ICH10 southbridge... I believe all P5Q series are using that... shucks... could it be an Intel chipset problem then? But then again I also heard of people using nVidia chipsets facing this problem, so maybe not...

I recently switched to an ASUS P5QL-PRO motherboard... what other MBs are you guys using? SerialNumber:Model:P/N:Firmware:DateCode:SiteCode:PurchaseDate:FailedDate:USername =========================================================== 9QM7VZBP:ST3500320AS:9BX154-303:SD15:09146:KRATSG:Oct2008:24Dec2008:poolcarpet 9QM6X90B:ST3500320AS:9BX154-303:SD15:09115:KRATSG:Oct2008:28Dec2008:DaftMule 9QM6W2JE:ST3500320AS: - :SD15: - : - :5Dec2008:19Dec2008:DerSnoezie 9QM4G4PK:ST3500320AS:9BX154-303:SD15:08503:KRATSG:Aug2008:Nov2008:dskbrk 9QM3RWHJ:ST3500320AS:9BX154-568:SD81:08464:KRATSG:Aug2008:23Dec2008:ToKuRo 9QM7KSQJ:ST3500320AS:9BX154-501:SD15:09134:KRATSG:28Oct2008:07Jan2009:jeroen__online 9QM2MFS6:ST3500320AS:9BX154-303:SD15:08406:KRATSG:Jan2008:23Dec2008:quattro150

I'm at a point where I wanna try some serial commands out, but afraid of wiping my precious data... shucks... I'm considering going out to buy another 7200.11 500GB just to experiment with the commands. And if I brick it, I'll just RMA it and get a new one. Just tell 'em that the drive was like that from the get go. Within a few days I'm sure they'll just give me a 1:1 replacement... hahaha! Question is, how many times are they gonna let me do it? And once I'm through with it, that is assuming I really get to pull the data off, I'll zero fill the old drive, RMA it, and end up with 2 500GB drives, in which I'll put it in a RAID0 config and get up to 200MB/s transfer rate, which I'll just use as a temp drive for my vid and gfx editing, and oh yeah, games and unimportant stuff... sound like a good plan? Or else, anybody have a drive with the LBA 0 problem, in which you don't want the data anymore? Or even a working spare drive? If you can't already tell, I'm desperate... Heh...

Strange... I'm hearing a lot of people having drives fail around Christmas time... so did mine... Dec 23rd... strange... and mine was bought in January...

we're famous... http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1105026 What's your take on this? Still think we can recover our precious data? I'm still optimistic...

I'm no HDD expert, but I think this tool is for those who have set HPA (Host Protected Area) to some large value, and then want to recover those lost space. Unfortunately in our case, the factory size is reported as 0GB, so I don't think this tool will work... But I'd really be happy if someone proves me wrong...

Well, I know for sure I have the BSY + 0 LBA problem.... what I don't know is if that problem was the result of a real hardware problem... from reading the forums, I tend to think it's not HW related... at least, my symptoms fit perfectly with the rest... To be sure, you guys should get the RS232 port up and at minimum see what gets sent out by the drive. You should get a LED 000000CC Faddr:0xXXXXXX or something like that right after power on and the HDD spins up, if you have the BSY problem. Then at least try to follow the steps at least up to clearing BSY bit. At least on my HDD, without clearing the BSY bit, I can't get to the serial terminal when I press CTRL-Z, so I can't do anything at all with the serial term. I bought the MAX232 chip for about RM10, and the rest of the stuff (caps, cables, connectors, etc) I had lying around. I can tell you where to get them in KL/PJ if you have trouble finding it.

Finally built a simple circuit for the RS232 translator. Powered on, and saw this: LED:000000CC Faddr:0024A051 LED:000000CC Faddr:0024A051 So I know it must be the BSY problem. Followed the steps from the Pichi, and now the drive is detected by BIOS, but with 0GB. BIOS also shows there's a HDD failure. Loaded Seatools, and it found the drive alright, but can't do anything to it. Same thing with MHDD.... shucks... mabe the next few commands still need to be done through the RS232 port....

Just curious... Assuming you had the BSY bit problem, how was he able to detect that you had multiple file structure damage and read/write errors without fixing the firmware and translator first? Did he move your platters to a good drive, read, and found that you had errors, put it back, and ship it back to you? I'm hardly a HDD expert, perhaps they really do have some way to check it out... otherwise, I think it's just a load of **** to get you to pay more than you should... but that's just me..

Found this: http://files.hddguru.com/download/Firmware...pdates/Seagate/ Anyone dare to try the SD1A firmware update?

Which co.? The one I checked with quoted me RM1300-RM1500... Maybe they have group discount...

RS232 stuff is cheap (<USD10 for sure), trial and error and risk of data lost forever is priceless... if we can get 10 people, count me in... (I'm in KL btw)

diagnostic port commands, same as the one Pitchi posted, but in slightly more readable .doc format. http://files.hddguru.com/download/Datashee...0RS-232%20Port/