yes me too did u manage to rectify this problem? regards chris Ok i have completed my firmware update and recovered a full 1tb healthy.. this screens is produced because you (like me) did not plug the sata power cord to the pcb board...ok like der .. gradius2 does mention it... now the only othr confusing thing was the power OFF/ON drive after S.M.A.R.T erase ..all i did was unplug sata power to pcb wait a littl over 10 seconds then reconnect it whilst pc is on ..continue with instructions from press ctrl+z.... i also would like to mention i did not do the g-list bit .. this code did take a great deal longer to show up however..like 20-25 mins---> Max Wr Retries = 00, Max Rd Retries = 00, Max ECC T-Level = 14, Max Certify Rewrite Retries = 00C8 User Partition Format 10% complete, Zone 00, Pass 00, LBA 00004339, ErrCode 00000080, Elapsed Time 0 mins 05 secs User Partition Format Successful - Elapsed Time 0 mins 05 secs After this msg i restarted pc and disconnected all other drives and updated firmware Although i am a complete novice , i was able to complete this tutorial... Cheers Gradius2 you are epic lifesaver as i was seriously not prepared to send anything back to seagate without at least trying this even though it is still under warranty...now where's that othr 1tb drive ..send this heap of ^%$@ back