ViniciusFerrao

I don't want to be banned, but I would like to shout really bad words to dlethe. BTW: My drive is fixed by ME.

Just ignore the flamewar people, this is just stupid. Gradius method saved all of us.

Check serial numbers with seagate update utility and confirm if is equal.

Man this is insane! You cannot do this! o.O

Strange... If I plug only the PCB without the Disk I got your symptoms. Check if your Frankenstein disk is spinning (even with head beat; my case). Are you sure that your both ST3500340AS are identical and running SD1A firmware on the working one? both drives are defo identical, and I updated the good drive with the latest firmware. i then take the bad pcb and put it on the good drive. i then get the symptoms as described above. i should have also said that the good drive (with good pcb) isnt working 100%. it has another fault but it is working although it is running slow. this is a less common fault with these wastes of money! If the "good" disk is not really good it may be the cause. Perhaps the timeout time increased and screwed up Firmware update. Don't know if this is correct but can have some sense.

Question, after you swap the PCB boards, and then you boot up, does the BIOS detect the HDD? Hello, I'm very happy now because I figured this out. :) :) When you swap the boards the "old" board should boot the new drive with 0Mb. Since the disk is not made for that PCB. Will be normally detected on BIOS. After this fireup firmware update. You'll some errors like Cylinder 0, assuming 63! Something like this. But just ignore and flash the drive. After the power cycle reswap PCB's and use the old drive. It should be fixed from BSY and from LBA=0! See details of what I've done in the Solution Thread. []'s I'm wondering if one can get away with not even attaching the PCB to the disk of the 2nd drive. The reason being is that when they make these at the factory, they probably just attach the PCB to a test machine which flashes the PCB and runs electrical tests on it. This would be easier to make these in mass and then ship a box of these to another site that attaches the PCBs to the actual disk that some other factory site made in mass. Then both are run through another test machine to make sure the PCB and drive heads and platters work together. Thus, for those with the PCB having LBA=0 and BSY, try just removing the PCB from the drive, attach the PCB to the power and IDE/SATA cable, and then reflash with the new firmware. It'd be interesting to see if this works. Maybe the BIOS doesn't need to detect them. This will also eliminate the possible damaging of the disk heads and platter of the drive that is incompatible since there isn't one. The most that will happen is there is no spinup, 0 heads, 0MB/GB, 0 cylinders etc or this method won't work. The only thing that will happen is that you are SOL! The other possiblilty to bypass the BIOS is to attach just the PCB to an external SATA or IDE to USB adaptor cable (see sabrent adaptors or equiv) and power cable ,then plug in the USB and flash thru the USB port. I'm not sure if one can flash thru the USB even if updating working drives, but without any knowledge about it working or not, the only way to attain knowledge is to experiment.....and hopefully the BIOS is too stupid. Using just the PCB without the disk simply fail. Since the PCB doesn't find a disk it waits for timeout. And this take an eternity. When finally Seagate Firmware Update launches it reports NO DISK. []'s Seagate replied my email regarding data recovery for free... Hmmm it appers that they are really interested in a good reputation after this lamentable firmware episode. []'s

Actually it goes, I tried that well before RS232 to TTL solution (2 weeks ago or more), and didn't work, so I give up and buyed the adapter instead. I must confess that drive never was the same after that (and I only did for around 10sec), it does some strange sounds in a while. I trully don't recommend this method, is like the mechanicals parts inside were forced, besides is playing with luck because the heads can always scratch the plates at that crucial moment. Is too risky only to avoid $20 (or less) bucks. Well since my RS232 to TTL isn't working as should be and I more worried about the data in the old disk I see no problems at all. And anyway, 2 weeks ago the SD1A firmware won't even exists for our drives!

I don't recommend this method, the reading/writing HEAD goes crazy and can kill the platters by scratching them. Actually it didn't go crazy. It try to align 8 times (I counted), and then the head disables and stop. []'s

Strange... If I plug only the PCB without the Disk I got your symptoms. Check if your Frankenstein disk is spinning (even with head beat; my case). Are you sure that your both ST3500340AS are identical and running SD1A firmware on the working one?

Question, after you swap the PCB boards, and then you boot up, does the BIOS detect the HDD? Hello, I'm very happy now because I figured this out. :) :) When you swap the boards the "old" board should boot the new drive with 0Mb. Since the disk is not made for that PCB. Will be normally detected on BIOS. After this fireup firmware update. You'll some errors like Cylinder 0, assuming 63! Something like this. But just ignore and flash the drive. After the power cycle reswap PCB's and use the old drive. It should be fixed from BSY and from LBA=0! See details of what I've done in the Solution Thread. []'s

Is your drive detected on BIOS? It should be with 0Mb.

Sorry but it will not. Every PCB is married with HDA, they're unique. Flashing will never works if your HD isn't recognized by BIOS at POST time. You need to unlock the drive with RS232 to TTL solution, or spend $500, or just RMA. There is no other solution. Gradius see my reply in Solution Thread... appears that my insane workarround really works!

Hey! I'm very happy reading your post! So flashing the PCB with other drive really works! Thanks for your feedback! If you wanna try fire up Firmware update utility in the bad board with the functional disk.

I have done this! Since my RS232 to TTL isn't working I swapped PCB's with identical ST31000340AS and flashed the bad board on a new disk, and worked flawlessly. []'s

My drive is back simply with firmware update to SD1A!