Screwy

The effect of random characters is generated by floating signal levels. If you are using a different computer for your teminal session, where your cable is plugged in, you must connect the GND between that computer and your HDD. In addition to this, there is an issue with the cellphone cables. Some take the power for the internal adapter chip from the connected phone and not from the serial or USB interface. Of course, these will not work without additionally connecting power to the appropriate cables. Keep on trying! I recovered the identical model and I think, that RX and TX are reversed with respect to the Seagate disk. So, you should first try to get the "LED:000000CC FAddr:0024A051" reading from the HDD in your terminal session. Then you should unmount the PCB etc. and proceed with the solution. I described with on page 65 of this thread. Good luck

The BSY problem decribed in this thread is an internal BSY state of the HDD, which is not indicated by the BSY light of the HDD or your computer, but it results in the HDD not being able to be detected by BIOS after power up! Your problem description is rather related to a fault state of the HDD which is caused by accessing some area on the drive, which is cannot propperly read resulting in a fault state. When you want to confirm the BSY error, you need to connect the TTL interface to your HDD and see the "LED:000000CC FAddr:0024A051" error typed continously by the HDD in the terminal session. Unfortunately, your problem looks to me more like a head-crash and the reformating etc. did not help. If your drive was in the BSY error state, you could not even have flashed a new firmware to it. I hope, that you have not very important data on the drive.

Hi there, the PCB replacement is not to be recommended. But you should verify, that the BSY error really is indicated by your drive. At the same time, you will verify, that the terminal connection is properly working. The loopback test does not assert this, because it would work with wrong terminal settings and even with wrong assumption on which is TX and which is the RX wire. And make shure, that you clean your contacts on the PCB when you have unmounted the PCB. It might help to read my post http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...st&p=854499 on this issue a few pages back. Good luck!

@ Visualize I recommend one of the cheap cellphone data cables like the nokia, you mentioned. To my knowledge, Siemens will do as well. If you have RS232 on your PC, you can use the RS232 type. But then you have to be carefull, wheter you get one wich takes the power from the mobile. No-name clones usually dont. If that is the case, you need to take +5V from the PC as well. And I suggest to connect your interface cable directy to the PC that will power the SATA drive, then you will not have all the difficulties with Ground connections and phantom characters in the terminal software. If you have RS232 on you PC and happen to have a box with electronic components, diodes, resistors and transistors, you can wire yourself a little interface. I would give you a clue. Cheers

@ filippode2 1. Changing the PCB ist not recommended, because of incompatibilities: geometrical data of the disk is programmed into the PCB. Booting the Disk with an incompatible PCB can cause severe damage to the read/write heads. 2. I hope, that this is not the case. Then the Read/Write error seems to me a problem caused by bad contacts on the motor or Head connector. What I recommend before executing the commands: Unmount the PCB completely and clean all contact areas of the PCB. These are the contacts for the motor and the contacts for the read/write heads. I used a rubber erasor and it worked fine. Often the contact areas are a little bit oxidized exept at the spot where contact is made. If, by unmounting the PCB you shift this point of contact, you only get a partial contact and this can be really bad. So try it again and look, what I have discribed in my post in the previous page. Good luck.

As prooven in the forum so many times: No, you are not loosing your data by fixing the error. But if you are not convinced by what your doing and your making some foolish mistakes, then yes, you can! So it's your decision: Go and ask Seagate like asdfasdfasdf ( it's free exept shipping costs ) or "do it yourself". Then look on what I have written the page before: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...st&p=854499 . If you need help, just ask! B) Good luck!

You don't need more photos. Look in this thread or e.g. in the tutorial mentioned just a few posts above: http://www.mapleleafmountain.com/seagatebrick.html Good luck.

Hallo, with the BSY-bug, you must get the "LED:000000CC FAddr:0024A051" error-indication on the serial line. If not, there is something different to look for. Please check if the SATA-data cable is working and if there need to be the 150 MByte line speed to be set with the jumper. Did you remove it first?

@Gradius2 first I would like to thank Gradius2 for the solution. It worked very fine for me with my father's Maxor STM350032AS with the BSY-problem. Of course, the old man did not have backups. I do not judge on Aviko's claim, that it was compiled from information of other sources. At least he helped so many of us here, which others from the Data Rescue Labs did not do, because they rather preferred to make some money of it. I think they should make their profit on issues, where their special equipment is really needed. Now to the difference in both approaches: If you strip the optional and unneccessary parts, they are really identical, except the power off/ power on cyle befor doing the m0,2,2 ... command at the end. Aviko claims, that this is unneccessary or dangarous. But I found, that just this was originally indicated in the solution claimes to be the first published source by Yura on the lithuanian website. Well I used it with the power down, which seems reasonable as the smart data is then recovered and everything set to normal operation before continuing. So he did it for me and I am very gratefull for it. But one advice for those who like to do it: Take your time - do not rush! There might be a different cause for the trouble. Other snakes are in the bush that don't carry a rattle! So verify in steps. For the BSY-problem it might be like this: First get the data coming from the HDD first to your terminal program: Do not unscrew anything yet. Connect the TX pin of the HDD to your interface and start the Terminal program. Connect slowly the power cable to the HDD and after spin up ( connect SATA power ) you must see the "LED:000000CC FAddr:0024A051" information from the HDD. If you do not get it, fix your interface first. To connect the pins I used a simple wire, made a little opening at the end with a needle and slid it over the pins on the HDD. Worked fine. A loop-back is not the method to verify the connection. It does not give any indication, whether your voltage on the interface is correct nor can you tell which is Tx and which the Rx line and it does not verify the propper baudrate etc. If you are using a cellphone cable with a built-in converter, be aware, that there are basically two versions with respect to where the power of the interface comes from: One sort takes it from the PC ( serial of USB interface ) and another takes it from the cellphone. If that is the case, you have to take the power externally and you need to connect GND to he HDD or the PC which powers the SATA power cable. GND on serial interface of HDD ist the same as on the SATA interface cable. I simply used the 5V supply outlet of the USB, which works fine. Be carefull about the description of the cellphone cable. Some indicate TX as the TX-pin of the cellphone which really is the RX-pin of the PC-interface. So try it first. Getting the link from the HDD makes no harm in the first place. When you have your serial communication working, disconnect your HDD and unmount the PCB (controller card) from the HDD. If you do not have the propper Torx 6 size screw driver, a small flat blade screwdriver which fits into the screw will work as well. Looking to the contact spaces on the PCB, I noticed that they were partly oxidized. Then you have to clean them first! Reconnecting such a board bears the risk, that some contacts are not connecting and you might damage the HDD. I used a rubber erazor for cleaning, which just works perfect. Do not only slide a plastic card under the board. Then you cannot look at the contacts and clean them resulting in the above described risk. Furthermore you might only disconnect the motor contacts but the head contacts partially. This is definetly not to be recommended. Isolation of the contacts and replacing the PCB is the better approach. I used two strips of baking paper. One for the Motor contacts and one for the head connector. In this last I cut a notch, so I had a sort of two pin fork, because I wanted to fit the strip over the contacts and leave the whole free for the connector screw. That's why I had the strip lead out to the far edge not the near one. Be carefull to have all contacts propperly isolated. I placed all screws back, but tightened them only slightly. Then later after releasing the screws a little bit I could simply pull out the strips of baking paper and no risk to the board replacing the screws while the board was under power. I first pulled the strip between the motor connectors as it seemed reasonable, as the motor was in "spin down" state and then I pulled the strip between the head contacts. And now for the timing of the corrective action. The descriptions in the thread where the method worked only after some retries, partially using one or another method indicated to me, that you should take time from one step to the next. It seems, that the disks needs some time to complete the actions for good. Don't rush. I did not use the part which should delete the G-List, as this should only be a 'last resort' and makes your disk operable less safely. The least is, that you must rescan your drive after this, so that bad sectors will be re-recognised. If your disk is without bad sectors, it does not any harm and does no good either. For power down / power up I pulled the SATA power connector, as SATA power "hot plug" capable. So that will be safe. You do not have 3.3 Volt on your SATA power, as the HDD does not use it. After everything was done, I powered again to see what the output on the serial interface was without the SATA data connection being established, and it seemed, that the drive did a smart diagnostics and saved information to disk. I reconnected the drive to the PC and everything was fine! Here is my log of the Hyperterm: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- { testing the serial communication: PCB still connected } { connect SATA power } LED:000000CC FAddr:0024A051 LED:000000CC FAddr:0024A051 { disconnect SATA power and unplug the serial connection } -------------------------------------------------------- disconnected controller { establish serial connection and connect SATA power } { press <Ctrl-Z> ( I did it multiple times ) } F3 T>/2 F3 2>Z Spin Down Complete Elapsed Time 0.153 msecs -------------------------------------------------------- reconnected controller F3 2>U Spin Up Complete Elapsed Time 6.655 secs F3 2>/1 F3 1>N1 F3 1> --------------------------------------------------------- power down - 10s - power up F3 T>m0,2,2,,,,,22 Max Wr Retries = 00, Max Rd Retries = 00, Max ECC T-Level = 14, Max Certify Rewr ite Retries = 00C8 User Partition Format Successful - Elapsed Time 0 mins 00 secs F3 T> --------------------------------------------------------- power down - 10s - power up RequestResumeSaveSmartFrame ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just a remark on "m0,2,2,,,,,22": As indicated in the thread, there is no difference to "m0,2,2,0,0,0,0,22" because zeros are taken as default for the command options. Getting the firmware update from seagate's site and writing that to the drive wasn't a problem at all. Good luck to all! B) If your using a laptop for the serial interface, you need to connect ground! But the pcb should not really get hot, only warm. If it is getting hot and especially some electronic parts on it then there is your problem: some electronic failure on the board.