dan2dan

I have just successfully completed this and thought I would add a few comments. I had huge problems with a soldering iron and in the end used an idea suggested by a nice man in Maplin - use a solder sleeve and shrink it using a soldering iron. Then simply push over the relevant pins. This will keep the pins in contact for this operation - I used the single core breadboard wires that are suggested in the links. To get power to the USB/RS232/TTL thing I found a spare molex connector and pushed on it a molex to SATA connector (of which I had plenty) and then simply snipped off the end and soldered the breadboard pins (see above) to the end of the wires. This is easy as you can poke the single core wire into the middle of the multistrand power wires. To get power to the disk drive, I simply plugged it in using the motherboard SATA power connector. Like some people I got a spin error when I entered the U command - but that was because the PCB wasnt touching the drive - simply tighten the screws and this goes away Like everyone else I found the you didnt need to remove the PCB completely, just loosed the screws, poke some paper under the disk connectors and then remove it and tighten the screws later ...and then dont forget to upgrade the drive firmware - Seagate's drive detect will take you everywhere you need to go - it eventually upgraded my firmware from SD15 to SD1A So - all in all not really a problem once I stopped trying to solder everything. Many many thanks to you all who have made disk recovery such a pleasure