jaclaz

HMMM. You need to make sure that ALL (meaning ALL) 0V or grounds of ALL equipment involved is properly connected together. You need to make sure that TX and RX DO NOT touch between them. (unless you try a loopback test - something that you did not specify - it is as well possible that the adapter is not good) You are supposed to NOT get anything until you press CTRL+Z. (when connected to the HD PCB). From the pictures you posted ALL connections, exception made for the TX/RX ones on the TTL side of the RS232-TTL converter look like badly done/insecure/not proper. Since you have an available Molex connector, get the power (0V and +5V ) from it INSTEAD of the whatever "power supply comes from a usb" to power the RS232to TTL adapter. Are you SURE that you got a 3.3V TTL converter (the page you mention - like most of the other similar ones seem like having been written by a headless chicken) it talks about 5 V logic, then about 3.3V one then about "Built with MAX3223/SP3223 from MAXIM/SIPEX/TI" but the picture is of a MAX232 which AFAIK is 5 V only. Check the actulal IC number on the chip on your adapter. Verify that the Vcc pin gets 3.3 V (and NOT 5 V) if chip is a 3223. Once verified the above do a loopback test. jaclaz

You are right, it simply does not work , and anyway re-orders the sections as well. jaclaz

I don't want to seem more grumpy than usual , but I thought you were here to learn how to do that yourself. jaclaz

Sure they are "cloning" in a dd-like or "forensically sound" manner. It all depends on what you actually want as a result, what you get with ghost (unless you do a dd-like clone) is NOT a clone, it is halfway a clone and halfway a backup of the data. you won't have on the copy deleted files, lost clusters, etc., etc. Example (review of the startech): http://www.geardiary.com/2010/08/10/review-startech-standalone-idesata-hard-drive-duplicator/ Real life speed (laptop SATA) about 3x80Gb = 240 Gb/hour or about 4Gb/min. The top speed depends on the drives obviously. jaclaz

The first two listed seem to me VERY like docking stations and completely UNLIKE hd cloning stations. So, once left the first two alone, being (notoriously) cheap , I would rather save US$ 80 and get this: http://www.startech.com/HDD/Duplicators/USB-to-IDE-SATA-Standalone-Hard-Drive-Duplicator-Dock~UNIDUPDOCK And also leave this (cheaper) thingy here alone: http://www.lindy.ie/usb-3-docking-cloning-station-for-25-35-sata-hard-drives/43112.html A "cloning" station without a display is as useful to a technician as a bicycle it is to a fish. Or go for the traditional design (and known producer): http://www.addonics.com/products/duplicator/HDUS35.asp Personally, if you are using it professionally, I would suggest this model: http://www.addonics.com/products/duplicator/HDUSI325.asp and think, for a difference of 50 bucks to get maybe the bigger brother http://www.addonics.com/products/duplicator/HDUSI325AES.asp See comparison table: http://www.addonics.com/products/duplicator/hdd_comparison.asp#one jaclaz

The USB to RS232 is OK The RS232 to USB seems OK BUT from the scarce and confusing info on the site it is possible that you will have to power it at 3.3V (and NOT at 5 V) in order to obtain the needed 3.3 V TTL level. In other words you will most probably need have to power it with an Orange cable coming from the PSU and NOT with a Red cable, similarly to the known "sparkfun" one mentioned in the Read-me-first (point #11): jaclaz

Seemingly your GROUND is ineffective. Re-read attentively the Read-me-first and these posts: from #3818 to at least #3834 From the pictures you posted seems like the ground from your PC PSU is NOT connected to the ground on the TTL side of the RS232-to-TTL adapter and of course to the ground of the whatever power supply actually powers the adapter itself. Using a BLACK cable for ground make help conforming to the "universal" standard colopuring convention, from the pictures it seems like you are using the Black cable for Tx and the Yellow for ground but this is obviously only an "esthetical" point. Right now you seem like having: PC PSU ground connected to the HD PCB through the SATA power cable PC PSU ground connected to the USB side of the USB-to-RS232 Serial converter through the USB cable PC PSU ground (maybe) connected to the RS232 side of the USB-to-RS232 Serial converter (internally in the USB-to-RS232 converter) PC PSU ground (maybe) connected to the RS232 side of the RS232-to-TTL converter (internally in the USB-to-RS232 converter) RS232-to-TTL power supply ground connected to the RS232-to-TTL converter RS232-to-TTL power supply ground (maybe) connected to the TTL side of the RS232-to-TTL converter (internally in the RS232-to-TTL converter) RS232-to-TTL ground connected to the PCB through the yellow wire Any (maybe) is not good. jaclaz

Are you talking of these? What if you use INSTEAD "Update .ini Fields sections (UpdateIniFields)": http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd346763.aspx jaclaz

I must conclude that you were not able to clone that hard disk properly (no offence intended ) as the whatever software/recovery partition has "detecting changes features" that is capable to check/verify"something" that you omitted replicating on the "target" drive. Judging from the way you brushed off the disk signature suggestion , that may be part of or the whole problem. jaclaz

I think there is a misunderstanding. Post a photo or a scan of the board (PCB). In any case, if you are trying with the head contacts, try with the motor contacts, see here: http://www.mapleleafmountain.com/seagatebrick.html jaclaz

HMMM, this must be the most foolish thing one can do: attempt a firmware replacement on defective hardware! (without asking for help before) NOW, you are ready? After having ALREADY put the drive in an unknown state by applying the firmware update? I was wrong , THIS is the most foolish thing, the good news are that you asked before attempting to do that. DO NOT EVEN THINK of doing this! Let's restart from the beginning, OK? Your DiamondMax 22 SATA 500 GB is - to all practical effects - a Seagate 7200.11, thus it can suffer as well from the same BSY or LBA0 problem, as well by a number of OTHER, UNRELATED problems. Now you should take some time reading the STICKIES: AFTER you have digested the info in them (please do take your time), read also this: (please do not tell us how you cannot see the images, we know that, they are lost forever, the only meaningful one, last one, shows that the drive has a BUSY green button lighted up, and the image on page__st__10 can be used as reference instead) I think we have NO way (anymore) to understand whether your drive is in LBA0 state, since this is done at boot, but maybe you can try it as well, what happens if you go into BIOS as soon as the PC boots? If the BIOS "sees" the drive BUT sees it as having 0 capacity, THEN in it is in LBA0 state. Let's first see if any of the two known problems exists (though I doubt it, since you somehow can "see" the disk). The attempts you made with recovery programs should hopefully NOT have caused any further damage. In ANY case, to attempt ANY recovery procedure you need another new, or DEFINITELY working Hard Disk size bigger than your "botched" 500 Gb (a 640 Gb would be perfect), ideally you should have TWO such devices, one to work on and one to restore the hopefully recovered data, but even one and some spare space on some other disk may do. Please do understand that I have not any interest in suggesting you to buy/procure such a new drive, I am telling you this because ANY serious attempt at recovery goes through a forensic sound or dd-like image of the disk. ANYTHING else, any program, any how to, any video on YouTube, any friend telling you, ANYTHING else suggesting to operate directly on the botched hard disk won't be supported, as it is likely to create more damages and worse than that may make the data (if recoverable) definitely UNrecoverable. jaclaz

Ideas are going to end soon. Are you trying insulating the head or the motor contacts? Whichever you are using now try with the OTHER set. Then try again, reading from here: Whatever contacts, are they "clean" and "springy", see here: jaclaz

Yep , a couple real ones : jaclaz

Yes (for Seagate), but they probably won't help you. Here: http://forum.hddguru.com/seagate-terminal-commands-t6411-40.html http://forum.hddguru.com/seagate-7200-terminal-commands-t11926.html http://files.hddguru.com/download/Datasheets/Seagate/Seagate%20Diagnostic%20RS-232%20Port/ This is "strange": When you enter the CTRL+Z you should be at: and NOT ALREADY at: (and if you are already at F3 2> there is no need to change to that level with /2 [ENTER]) Power off everything, remove the plastic card, power on, wait it spins or 30/60 seconds or more (to make sure it initializes "normally"), power off, reapply the plastic card, and retry. jaclaz

Try again from the beginning. Wait some time AFTER the F3 T>/2 BEFORE issuing the F3 2>Z. (30 seconds or 60 seconds may do ) jaclaz

With all due respect. , I cannot understand anything of your post. Is there a queston? Or an issue? Why has it been posted in General Discussion? Are you talking of this? http://windows7themes.net/how-to-check-mbr-for-virus-infection-via-mbrcheck.html It simply compares the current MBR (CODE part) checksum (SHA1) against an internal table of "standard" checksums. It is a mostly unuseful tool, in the sense that there are millions of machines around that don't have "standard" MBR code, like most OEM's with a recovery partition, then grub4dos, syslinux, gujin, mbldr and heaven only knows how many other boot.managers that have their own MBR code, published each in a zillion subsequent versions. Depending on the extents of the MBR code that it uses it may also give "false positives" (meaning "hacked MBR") on different languages of the same MS Operating systems, if it does the first 440 bytes, it includes the "text strings" that may change in different languages. So, it is ONLY useful if you know that you should have a "standard" MBR among those in the internal "table". Think of it as an AV product (but with no heuristics) it would need a very wide database of "MBR definitions", constantly updated, to become an useful tool, IMHO. jaclaz P.S.: TWEAKUI: http://windowsxp.mvps.org/tweakui.htm

I never boot in WinPE so I can't say for sure. Please note how that question was posted by Tripredacus and NOT by me. jaclaz

No need to be sorry , every place has it's queer things, but we do have a (most probably better BTW ) pasta and wine than you have, and we have it at every other corner and for a fraction of the price you pay it in "italian" restaurants (BTW here we call them simply restaurants ), so I think I'll live without accessible ispropyl alcohol.... jaclaz

Hmmm, quite rare to find people in a non Commercial environment using a DELL Server and Server 2003 Enterprise with network booting. jaclaz

JFYI, in Italy - as an example - isopropyl alcohol is VERY rare and in practice the ONLY way to get it (and not actually cheap €5 / 1 liter) is to get it from some specialized shop involved in tools and materials for restoration of wood and old furniture, and even the one that you can find is not "pure" (i.e. 100% isopropyl) but at 97% and "denaturated", anyway "good enough" for cleaning this kind of stuff . This is due to some tax/laws, if you want to sell this kind of alcohol you need a special license and need to hold a dedicated registry for it, in practice only wholesale and big chemical companies get (or can afford) this license. jaclaz

As for WinPE, I'm thinking Win PE 3.0 x64. Yep , but I seem not being able to find *any* reference to WinPE in CoffeeFiend's post either. BTW, and JFYI, WIM support was added very recently (today ) to Win7PE, so it is fairly possible to add to WinPE as well, though cannot say about x64: http://reboot.pro/9246/ http://reboot.pro/files/file/39-wmisupportscript/ jaclaz

Good. I guess we can change/semplify it to: robocopy "%DPMSource%" "%USB_drive%\DPM\%DPMname%" %roboparametermirror% Now let's assume that you have a plain text file like the following list.txt: ::Hello I am a senseless header, here only to show how you can skip lines in a FOR /F loop C:\Program Files\Microsoft DPM\DPM\Volumes\ShadowCopy\vol_9edf29cf-c89a-4fe5-97d6-7c9ce70c13b0 And a batch file: @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION SET USB_drive=U: SET roboparametermirror=/E /ZB /MIR /XD "System Volume Information" /XF "*.mp*" "*.avi" "*.mkv" "*.wm*" "*.m4*" /LOG+:"%LOG%" /TEE /NP FOR /F "skip=1 tokens=* delims=" %%A IN (list.txt) DO ( SET DPMSource=%%A SET DPMName=%%~nA ECHO robocopy "!DPMSource!" "%USB_drive%\DPM\!DPMname!" %roboparametermirror% ) What happens? What happens when you add some more source directories to list .txt and re-run the batch? jaclaz

Check your time service notifying settings: jaclaz

WHICH WinPE? jaclaz

Does the wording of my post leave any doubts about that? I'll try again: DO NOT use "windows alcohol". The additives in it will leave traces. DO NOT use acetone or other similar solvents. Unless you want to melt some plastic. You should use isopropyl alcohol ONLY. IF you don't have the above, use pure ethilic alcohol (the one used to produce alcoholic beverages/liquors, like 90% or 95%) IF you don't have the above, use "medical" alcohol, BUT be very careful to NOT leave any traces ("medical alcohol" is the above BUT a form of "denaturated" with some additives, including the "red/rose colour "mwethylviolet" or similar): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatured_alcohol these additives may leave residual traces IF you don't have any of the above leave the lense dirty or clean it "dry" with a brush or similar. BTW, just as for similar cleaning chores, Vodka is not that bad, either. jaclaz