corkyblue

Sounds very familiar... (and firmware is affected) If it is not seen in BIOS then there is a very good chance that it is BSY and you can safely try this method. Good luck is there no other way i can establish if its actually in BSY state?? (like i said, it just loops over and over trying to start up) thanx

Barracuda 7200.11... do I have this same problem?? I have a internal Barracuda 7200.11...Firmware SD33 .... Manufac: 11/2008.....and for some reason it refuses to start up when connected via SATA at bootup.. I can hear the drive actually spinning to start with, then it seems to reset itself and try over again, on an endless unsuccessful cycle. it does not want to initiate...however im guessing i would not hear these sounds if it was not spinning up at all?... this text seems to match my problem: Reason for the Seagate 7200.11 Failure This problem is caused by a firmware issue that sets the drive's "event log" pointer to an invalid location. This is detected by the drive during power-up initialisation, and the drive switches to fail-safe mode to prevent further corruption and loss of user data. Once the failure has occurred user data becomes inaccessible. During power up, if the Event Log count is at 320, or any multiple of (320 + Nx256), and if a particular fill pattern is present in the factory reserved area of the drive, the firmware will incorrectly allow the Event Log pointer to increment past the end of the Event Log data structure. This error is detected during initialisation and returns an "Assert Failure", which causes the drive to enter it's fail-safe mode. When the drive enters this mode further updates to the event log counter are impossible as the same results occur at each power-cycle. The problem can only occur if a power cycle initialization occurs when the Event Log is at 320 or a multiple of 256 thereafter. Once a drive is in this state, the user will not be able to resolve/recover existing failed drives. ...but i am not sure...plus i dont know how to get a diagnosis?!? The drive resides in a clean host system as a back-up drive for data, and has not been dropped or had any form of stress....it just stopped working and disappeared form my computer. I have contacted Seagate but its an OEM so they will not help me any further....The OEM would not help as i beleive its out of waaranty and even if it was still under, then they would only offer a replacement...which of course, i do not want.....i need the data only - this drive has important stuff and for the record the £600GBP i have been qouted from data recovery is too much... any help/advice is very much appreciated!! Thanks in advance, Corky