valkyrio

Of course you upgrade the firmware! That's the firs thing that you should be doing right after fixing your hard drive. I have heard that people get their data salvaged for free if you send it to Seagate and explain what happened. It's a known bug, so you don't have to pay for the data recovery.

I'm just not too keen on soldering wires, never done it before and I don't want to mess anything up. You don't need to solder anything. Either do the Nokia cable one or look at this: and this one:

Quite honestly I'd use (and have used) the serial converter (TTL to USB) it's the easiest method imo.

Since it doesn't show up, I'm thinking it's the BSY problem. With the other problem I think the drive still showed up.

Yep. Mine just happened to be yellow.

my question is using the cable (picture attached) am i cutting off the serial connector and soldering the correct wires to the correct parts of the PCB? (is there a better way to connect the wires w.o soldering?) then following the hyper terminal steps and attaching the sata power from my pc power supply when necissary? Also, the drive that has bricked was being used as an external (i bought the drive and placed it within an enclosure), my pc is old so my MOBO doesnt support sata, however the power supply (which is fairly new)has sata leads. Anyway, my question is the drive doesnt show up under "my computer" or Disk Manager anymore, it doesnt make any clicking noises. Other than it not showing up it seems to be fine. I figure since it doesnt show up under Disk Management its most likely BSY issue (if its either of the two) but, is there a way to find out if the issue is 0lba or BSY without hooking it up to the MOBO directly and checking the BIOS? Soldering?! You don't have to solder at all. check that for instructions. This is how my cable was when I finished: And just to make sure, I left the contacts there: I didn't take that part out. All I discarded of was the plastic. This makes it so that it's easy to connect the cables to the drive. Just make sure they're well insulated and make sure you have the right cables hooked up to the right contacts. (You can check the manufacturer's guide for the cable, google them if the link isn't in the post with all the instructions.)

Hm. I powered down for sixty seconds. Don't know if that makes a difference.

Did you do anything crazy to the drive while it was knocked out? like, punching it, freezing it, etc? Because tbh it just sounds like it's damaged. I got that error on HDs that were dropped one time too many. Also, I'm not sure if you answered this or not but did you try accessing the hard drive from another drive? (i.e. setting it as secondary) And finally, you may have to find help elsewhere, as this no longer sounds like a firmware issue.

Actually Kling, covering either contact seems to work. For example, on youtube someone used the nokia cable (or whatever it is) and they covered the contacts near the top of the PCB. I myself used a similar cable and covered the motor contacts Both of us were successful. According to one guide I read, it seems you can do either, but not both. I prefer covering the motor contacts because you don't have to take off the whole pcb in order to interrupt the contact. You can just slide in a piece of paper that can be slid out and then the screw re-tightened instead of having to put the whole pcb back on it.

I didn't notice any data loss, and I did two drives.

Will this work if there are different OSs in all three drives? Say disk 2 = ubuntu, disk 3 = vista? Or will I have to use grub4dos in that case?

looool... Sorry. I was half asleep when I read that. I'll try it in a bit. Thanks!

Do I add it to the drive that is currently booting up as default? Or do I add it to all three?

K, bit of a quick write up but more descriptive than the last one. In order to get my drives running again (from the BSY error) I did the following. Obtained a USB to TTL cable. I got the TTL - 232R-3V3. I believe there's also a 5V version. Also, a torx 6 screw driver (labeled as T6 when I bought it.) You will need access to a SATA power cable (wish I knew this before I started, since it meant moving everything and almost damaging one of my drives while moving my tower onto my desk and in a proper place to get the SATA power cable out.) First thing I did was loosen the screw directly above the motor contacts. You do NOT have to take off the whole PCB board. I would suggest against it. I loosened the screw and inserted a piece of thin card board to interrupt contact between the circuit board and the motor contacts. I practiced a lot, making sure that the contacts were not touching. To insert the paper I loosened a couple of other screws, but once I was sure the contacts weren't touching I tightened all of them except for the one directly above the contacts. I left this one a little lose, so that when I took out the paper it would come out a little easier. Next I prepared the cable - I took all of the contacts out of the connector (by pulling back the little black tab that is directly below the exposed part of the contacts in the connector) and then proceeded to insulate all of them. Once that was done, I hooked up the appropriate ones to the HD. In my case, orange was RXD, yellow was TXD, and black was GND. Since you have to connect the PC TXD to the drive's RXD, I connected the orange to the pin on the right (with the PCB facing up) the yellow to the one immediately left of it, and the GND to the second pin from the left. (The first pin from the left is not used at all.) Make sure your contacts are properly insulated with electrical tapes so you don't risk frying anything. Next I connected the SATA power cable to the drive. Then I connected the USB to the computer. It'll come up as a new device, and you have to install the drivers for it. The ones you'll want to use are the VCP (Virtual COM Port) drivers. For the FTDI 232 cables, the drivers are here: http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm It's the very first one on the list. The device is labeled as FT232R. I believe it'll show up as a Serial Bus Converter or something along those lines in your Ports section of the Device Manager (to go there, right click on My Computer, then Properties, then click on the Hardware tab and click Device Manager.) Note what COM number the device is installed as. For me it showed Serial Bus (COM3). From there on out, I followed the Gradius/Carter in Canada guides. The Carter guide is far easier to read, IMO. http://www.mapleleafmountain.com/seagatebrick.html I think it's been linked here before. I connected in the hyperterminal using the COM number listed under the Device Manager. The first time around I didn't get a response, but I both restarted and switched the RXD and TXD cables, after that it worked perfectly. I suggest doing one of these, and then the other if you don't get a response either. I didn't run into any problems, so I can't give any more preemptive advice. Just make sure you're careful after every step, and triple check the commands you input. Also, make sure you have the contacts properly in place as well as properly insulated. I weighed down my TTL cable to make sure the contacts wouldn't slip off. Anyways, yeah, prolly add some pictures sometime later on and host it somewhere else.

So, I just recently repaired two of my drives that were bricked due to a firmware bug. My issue now is that I have three drives, all of which have an OS already installed on it. All three of them work perfectly fine, and are running Windows XP How can I change the boot order without having to go into the BIOS? I know Linux has some handy programs that run at boot, and let you pick which partition you want to run on. Is there any equivalent for windows? Or will I have to change the boot order every time? P.S. Not sure if this is the right forum, but this is the one that seemed the most appropriate.