"If you are doing this "Commercially" or "Professionally", you might consider getting a PC-3000 and a subscription for it (or a similar tool/software/support)." how much does something like this cost? I'm guessing it's not worth it to fix a couple of drives. "Paradoxically , the refurbished 7200.11 might be (IF they belong to those that were simply bricked by the original firmware issue) more reliable then refurbished disks from other manufacturers as they have anyway never been opened. " Very good point!!! "Very rarely you can talk the Seagate support into allowing a free data recovery at their i365 subsidiary, and in any case it takes time and there is the big risk (not to be underestimated) of freight to and from them (lost items, stolen or damaged ones do happen), so even when "total" data recovery is possible and "free" it is risky." How would one go about this<G> "Otherwise a typical data recovery carried by a Pro goes into the several hundreds of dollars/euros, no matter if it happens to be a five minutes job. (though there are of course several very reliable and correct data recovery firms, there are also unfortunately a number of charlatans and let's say "less than 100% transparent approaches/procedures")." "jaclaz" That's the real part I don't get. If it's a 5 or even 15 minute job when you don't need to open the drive (no need for a clean room), why don't they charge less? I even wrote some companies telling them it's just a fw fix and they still would only give a full data recovery price or wanted to check the drive first but in all cases the cheapest I found from one of the main companies was $600. There were other lower prices but one has to wonder about them. Besides I heard, can't remember where, that when they give you a quote they have already figured out how to recover the data or have recovered it already. So I don't get why the main DR companies don't give customers a break when they don't have to use their clean room. I don't think i would have tried to DIY if the prices were more reasonable. Now i know i am gonna be flamed, by the DR people, for that reasonable and i agree with their argument about paying a ton for a good heart surgeon vs. a bad one. But I am not talking about heart surgery, a firmware fix that many DIY'ers have done sucessfully is more like a flu shot! They are so cheap that some years I get two just to make sure. I'm kidding I hate shots, I also hate trying to fix my drives fw but that doesn't mean I'm not gonna get/try it. Good luck to everyone that tries this and let me just point out two things. 1) when your pcb is not connected to your hd completely that excess electricity will eventually go somewhere you don't want it. Try to fix your drive on the first 1-3 shots. I think it was on my 8 th try that I messed up 2) On the 7200.12 at least there could be other problems in the firmware and/or drive that won't be fixed by the "BSY" or "LBA" fixes. I am still working on mine, over a month now, and have over 15 pages of notes from forums and websites so don't give up just heed some of the warnings. Wow that was long and I had just planned on commenting on jclaz's comment about seagate refurnished drives possibly being better than others which I think is 100% on point hence the reason I just paraphrased it.