Bke1981

Hi Thank you all for sharing this information. I was able to recover the lost data from my hard disk (although it took me more than 7 hours to get it working, but that was my own fault). My experience: I attempted to make my own serial-to-TTL adapter, but it turned out the MAX232 only works properly for 5 V. Finally I ended up using this module from GHI electronics: http://www.ghielectronics.com/catalog/product/266. It has an USB connection at one side, and two JST3AA connections at the other side (one for RX,one for TX). Works very nice, and you have a LED indication for both Rx and Tx data traffic ... Connecting the RX/TX/GND to the connector at the back of the HDD can be tricky, but I found a nice solution: I took an old audio cable that came with an old CD-ROM player (you know: the cable at the back that goes between the player and the audio card). I took the side that goes into the CD-ROM player, and took of the plastic holder. The pins will fit perfectly into the connector at the back of the HDD... I then placed some thermal heat shrink over the contacts, to prevent they can touch each other. I did my communications with putty. One big thing to realize: you shouldn't wait too long to press CTRL+Z after powering up the drive. Otherwise you won't be able to access the menu. You won't be able to access the menu at all if you didn't place a paper card between the head contacts and the PCB. P.S. now the data is rescued, I will have some fun trying to destroy this stupid HDD (let's see how fast it can rotate before it blows!). No Seagate for me ever again!