This is the problem that I have. I have the st31000340as 1tb drive from thailand with original firmware sd15, and it recently failed. However, I have been able to access it via the bios and upgrade firmware sd1a. Now, upon returning to windows, the drive is found, and it shows that I have 499 of 931 free. OK. The problem is when I open it up. It takes a few seconds to spool through and find my folders. After the green bar in the status bar reaches full, the folders appear in Explorer. From there, the drive freezes, i cannot copy the data over. Explorer freezes and then I have to click the x and close program. Is my problem different? I'm thinking if I try to do a level format, all the data will be erased. I run seatools from dos and get fail on all tests because it cannot read the drive. Help?