psynrg

Thought I'd better mention that the above is no longer relevant! It's fixed! It's working and backing up right now! To anyone else experiencing the same - give it some time before you enter the spin down command. I gave it about 1 minute and it finally worked!!!! I can't thank everyone enough for providing such detailed step by step instructions, really amazing work, thank you!!!

I thought I was making good progress after having tested everything successfully on some useless test drives ( a couple of retired 7200.11's ). So confidence high with the set up I started on the important drive. Sure enough when connected to the circuit I was getting the "LED: 000000CC FAddr: 0024A051" status in the terminal window. So I disconnect power, insert insulation between motor contacts reattach power and CTRL-Z gives me the prompt: F3 T> I enter /2 for the F3 2> prompt and now I type the infamous spin-down command: Z unfortunately, all I ever get in return is: "LED: 000000CE FAddr: 00280569" and it repeats at approx. 30 sec intervals. I have searched the forums and followed other's suggestions when this message has shown before. But starting from scratch I only end up with "LED: 000000CE FAddr: 00280569" Does this mean the drive is actually and really dead? Any suggestions very much appreciated! Cheers

Thanks for the welcome! BlouBul & jaclaz! Thank you very much - this has got to be the most helpful forum I've ever seen! Your tips are excellent and indeed just good common sense! I must employ more of that in future

Hi all and many thanks for the guide on trying to recover these terrible Seagate HD's. I have understoood everything, I have all the required bits in place - and I am lucky enough to have some other HDs to experiment on before I go to try and recover the important one (my hunch is it is stuck in BUSY.) So first go (I have a little TTL to USB board) loopback functioning (using puTTY for access) and I'm stuck at the simplest step. How on earth to you connect anything to those tiny pins on the HD (GND, RX,TX)??? I'd rather not solder directly to the pins, but even then, they are too small - or am I just too inexperienced with a soldering iron? Is there a particular type of edge connector that I can plug in here and instead plug/solder some wires to that? Any hints on this part of the process much appreciated - it seems I am the only one with probs at this stage!