tlh1005

Another success story here, thanks to all of you guys for putting this altogether. It's great to see a community of people helping others and sad to see that it is required for this type of issue. I cannot say enough that I won't ever buy another Seagate HDD regardless of price and the same goes for HP. Although I admit is is a bit of an adrenaline rush to see the solution work, customers shouldn't have to result to wiring up and accessing low level interfaces. BTW, the tutorial to fix the BUSY error is what worked for me. I wanted to point that out because I actually never saw any such error code, and my desktop was completely incapacitated with the Seagate in the boot sequence. It froze on the BIOS start screen every time. All other symptoms matched exactly. Good luck to the rest of you... I am cloning the cr@p Seagate at the moment but will be running to Tiger Direct/Comp USA/Best Buy ASAP tomorrow. I've learned my lesson about regular backups.

Let's put it this way : We have a read-me-first: (BTW linked to on the "tutorial at the beginning off this thread") that lists (point #3) TWO tutorials: Now, which one would you choose? One posted in a semi-hurry by Gradius 1 1/2 year ago and not updated/bettered/refined or one that has been edited/changed in response to the various questions/problems/whatever and is actually RECOMMENDED? A third one.... (which is allright , but then why asking for help here?) OF COURSE the PCB has to be powered, the original tutorial gave this as implied. (as it is, since we are talking about communicating with a device - have you ever tried communicating to your modem, or handy, or whatever when the device is powered of or has the mains plug disconnected?) On the other hand, if you actually read the Gradius' tutorial you will see that the really difficult part is to screw back the detached PCB while power is on.....which has been removed by the clever trick of the paper strip. Next post should be about the image not showing a GROUND connected..... jaclaz I've just read multiple sites over the past 4 days. I know the CA-42 method will work and I already understood why it wasn't recommended. In my first post I did state that I'm getting the TTL converter, but since I have one of these cables I figured it was worth a shot (and notice I did not ask questions about wiring of the device since that is impossible to know). The questions I have are without regard to the connection method used from the terminal machine. I've basically asked two questions about the process; Whether the PCB would allow other characters to be communicated back to the terminal even though 'Ctrl z' was not recognized, and I asked about the explicit reference/non-reference to supplying PCB power from the SATA cable in this and other tutorials. Also, I've read that TX signals are short bursts of voltage so I was wondering if this is how the neccessary voltage was applied to the circuit. BTW, I do know that ground must be connected to the TTL on the drive to prevent sporadic characters being displayed back to the terminal. I appreciate the answer concerning the PCB (even though it is littered with sarcasm etc.), but I guess I deserve SOME of that...

It would be nice if you could start a new thread reporting your experience, so that other people may find it more easily than navigating the present thread. @tlh1005 The CA-42 is deprecated not because it won't work, only because it won't work easily (provided you have a "good" CA-42 and not a "bad" one ). Basically you shouldn't type anything to the terminal once the disk is connected, only Ctrl+Z (mind you Ctrl+Z is NOT Ctrl+z) and get: F3 T> The BSY should not prevent booting, AFAIK, but it may depend on the OS you are running, it seems like 7 has this problem : http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=145325 (but that is NOT a BSY) jaclaz I have been using lowercase "z", sorry the uppercase was a late night typo. The desktop the drive goes in is Vista 64-bit. I hope I have the busy problem, otherwise I am sure recovery companies will be happy to say I have a "level 3+" or whatever issue and ask for $1k+. Have people been able to recover drives with the HP firmware this way? My Seagate is an OEM from HP and the firmware was listed as HP24, but putting the serial in on the Seagate site does say I need the firmware update. Its a drive from Aug. '07 so I think that is pretty definate. I saw a forum post on a site for "recovery professionals" and one of them acted as if the recovery would be different on HP firmware etc. That could be cr@p though, those guys are quick to poopoo on any DIY solution. I understand the risks and why, but a good bit of it is a scare tactic to justify the exhorbent recovery prices that charge. I suppose if it is not the BSY issue then my PCB must be bad. The drive sounds fine and spins up OK, but the BIOS won't recognize it at all and my PC won't do ANYTHING with it in the boot sequence at all. I understand the concept of not needing to power the USB to TTL conversion since USB is powered itself, but why is it that some of the tutorials mentioned connecting the SATA Power to the hard drive during the process and some don't? Is this an ommision or is it not neccessary: http://sites.google.com/site/seagatefix/ (Mentions attaching SATA Power to the drive in addition to attaching power to the Serial-TTL converter The tutorial at the beginning of this thread does not mention that step. Thanks!

I've got a dead 750G Barracuda built in late '07 for my HP desktop. My issue seems exactly like the busy error. The only thing is, I was not home when this occurred, I came home to the system frozen on the boot screen with HP logo, it never could POST due to the hard drive. Although my CD-ROM is first in the boot order it wouldn't boot from a CD, it would still freeze on the BIOS startup. I couldn't get into BIOS, run setup, or anything else until I removed the hard drive, and now I can get into BIOS etc. and boot from a cd. I never saw any error messages though, which makes me wonder if I really have the BSY problem. Everything else fits the bill though. My question is, do you have to see the error to know it is the BUSY problem? I had a generic Nokia CA-42 with working drivers... I can pass the loopback test connecting with three different wires. I know I know, this is deprecated, but I just figured I'd try while waiting on a proper cable which I plan to order tonight. I am struggling through trying to find the right wires since two of three will pass the loopback test and either could be RX/TX. I am on my on there I know. My question is, when you connect to the TTL of the PCB, should you see whatever you type or should the screen be blank until you hit Cntrl-Z? Depending on which wire I connect, I can see everything I type except the Cntrl-Z. Cntrl-Z does nothing. Should I be able to see everything else? If I order the USB to TTL does it come with a diagram stating which wire is which, similar to the way the SERIAL to TTL circuit has them printed on the board? Gosh I wish HP and Seagate would just treat us fairly and repair the problem. I'm giving it 1 more week before I start searching for someone willing to unbrick this thing for a reasonable price. Thanks!