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Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 Troubles


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Is the 0 GB bug the same as the BSY bug? Or do they both happen at the same time? It's either 2 different problems, or people are using the terms interchangeably.

They are somewhat hand-in-hand problems. First the drive will lock up in a "BSY" state and will not be detected by the BIOS. Some have successfully unlocked their drive from the "BSY" state and it gets recognized by the BIOS but it is detected as LBA 0B in size.

Edited by icefloe01
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Is the 0 GB bug the same as the BSY bug? Or do they both happen at the same time? It's either 2 different problems, or people are using the terms interchangeably.
They are somewhat hand-in-hand problems. First the drive will lock up in a "BSY" state and will not be detected by the BIOS. Some have successfully unlocked their drive from the "BSY" state and it gets recognized by the BIOS but it is detected as LBA 0B in size.

Was there not also a small handful of people who got the LBA = 0 problem without the BSY problem, or am I recalling incorrectly?
Visualisation of the seagate 7200.11 fail & fine dataset at present:

Look at the tightly clustered occurence of the failures.. What could be causing this?

http://img127.imageshack.us/img127/1193/ba...traject3wr5.png

Some many pages ago it was suggested that the probable reason for all the failure days being within the same time period was that people who had earlier failures would have moved on by now, and so only people who have recently had the problem would be turning up to give their fail date.

East Tennessee is not the most technologically inclined place, I can't find a single shop around Knoxville that might have a Serial->TTL converter board. Further, I'm not the most knowledgeable about electronics, so converting something or making it myself as has been suggested is kind of out of the question for me for the time being. Such being the case, would this device be suitable?

http://alldav.com/index.php?main_page=prod...;products_id=11

$4 and free shipping (In the U.S. only, no international orders I'm afraid..).

Once I've got that, I'll only need to find a place that's not sold out of wires like this that Fatlip linked to:

http://shop1.frys.com/product/4717419

Those exact wires I can't find for sale elsewhere online, and I'm not sure what to look for in terms of jumper wires, if anything specific at all.

Would these work? They appear to be a 2" version of the same wires Fatlip linked to.

http://shop1.frys.com/product/5102056

Edited by Hazor
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Such being the case, would this device be suitable?

http://alldav.com/index.php?main_page=prod...;products_id=11

$4 and free shipping (In the U.S. only, no international orders I'm afraid..).

Yes, this device is suitable. (It has MAX3232 or equivalent integrated circuit).

You can use 5V or 3.3V to power supply.

I use 3.3V and 1 resistance in series of 1K in RX and other resistance of 1K in TX (for protect hdd port).

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Such being the case, would this device be suitable?

http://alldav.com/index.php?main_page=prod...;products_id=11

$4 and free shipping (In the U.S. only, no international orders I'm afraid..).

Yes, this device is suitable. (It has MAX3232 or equivalent integrated circuit).

You can use 5V or 3.3V to power supply.

I use 3.3V and 1 resistance in series of 1K in RX and other resistance of 1K in TX (for protect hdd port).

FWIW, for my recovery the price I paid for my serial to sata cable + software was $500. I wasn't brave enough to make my own and risking damaging the recovery further. The kit was missing a power adapter but luckily I had one. The fix takes about 5-10 minutes to implement. Day 5 of restore and it's still working. Not sure if the fix will be permanent though.

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Does anybody know what type of connector/interface uses the solution from salvation data to fix the BSY problem?

If it is a standard RS232 adapter like some people are using or trying to find, perhaps someone could get a copy of the software.

I would pay some for it with pleasure. I know is not fair for salvationdata but I think it is not fair as well to pay thousand of dollars/euros for a product that whe are going to use only once in our whole lifes.

On the other hand, if salvation data would sell a cheaper solution with only the needed adapter and a patch to fix the ST3500320AS-SD15 drive, I'm sure it would have thousands of customers around the world.

Excuse my english but I'm from Spain.

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Well, I managed to find my way to this topic from Gizmodo. Haven't posted on msfn in a while.

Anyway, I also am an owner of the 1tb 7000.11 series. The very first one I ordered was DOA, and the second one started dying within a month. Since then I have bought seagate hard drives so I have more space to have backups.

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FWIW, for my recovery the price I paid for my serial to sata cable + software was $500.

Can you please post a picture of the Serial to SATA cable? I've never seen one of these before. :blink:

Mine is not that straight forward. There's a separate console that connects to the PC via USB. The serial cable is then connected to the console. It's definitely something I could NOT put together. The repair kit I got came with this and a whole bunch of adapters. The documentation and support was a bit painful and patience is definitely needed.

Someone suggested teaming up in our locales and splitting the cost of the kit. As I doubt Seagate is going to do anything about it (they can't, really. The liability alone in this economic climate?) I would say this is probably the easiest method for anybody who needs their data back. I myself already have a couple people online shipping their drives to me to unbrick. I called a couple of Data Recovery sites and the cheapest quote started at $1500 low priority. I don't mind referring to these guys if you've dropped your hard drive while it was on or flooded it in the basement but for a simple firmware fix that should never have been there in the first place it seems like using a chainsaw when all you need is a pocket knife.

For what it's worth I know someone who's trying to get Italy up and running but no repair kit yet. I'm in Toronto, Canada with a kit and a rescued ST31000AS SD15.

---

Rule #1 Always back up your data

Rule #2 Always back up your data (This is a backup to Rule #1)

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I've tried asking SalvationDATA if they had cheaper solution or even group discounts, unfortunately they don't.... heck, I wouldn't too, if I were them, seeing that they are the ONLY commercial solution that is even remotely affordable.... I'm surprised they don't even increase it just because of this issue...

Anyway, fuzzby, it looks like you're doing a great service for the folks up in Canada... I know this may be too much to ask (and maybe even bordering on breaking some copyright or IP laws), but perhaps you could help this forum by looking at what's going on in the serial ports... I'm sure someone on this forum can make an adapter that you could use to peek into the serial port activity... that would certainly speed up our efforts here to come up with a solution... just a thought, and I fully understand if you or others don't think it's a good idea... it is, after all, some form of stealing....

Like you, I am willing to pay some amount to recover my data, but USD500 is still rather steep....

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Mine is not that straight forward. There's a separate console that connects to the PC via USB. The serial cable is then connected to the console.

What is the full chain?

PC ----USB----console-----serial cable------? special adapter ? ----- harddrive?

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http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/messag...e.id=4445#M4445

Is it me or AlanM is admitting that there is an issue with the 7200.11s???? :ph34r:

I just want to make sure everyone is aware of the troubleshooter that works with undetected drives. It may not solve the issue, but it gets a great deal of the beginning, basic stuff out of the way, and it prevents missing little things at first.

Saludos, ToKuRo.

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looks like a little slip of the tongue to me :P BTW today I got this message when I tried to log in for some PM action:

We're sorry, but you have been banned from using this site.

* You have been banned for the following reason:

Continuous violation of the Seagate Community rules and regulations.

Edit: Oh and the Inquirer article has started to spread:

http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/01...acuda.failures/

http://pchardwareblips.dailyradar.com/arti...drives_failing/

Edited by DerSnoezie
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http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/messag...e.id=4445#M4445

Is it me or AlanM is admitting that there is an issue with the 7200.11s???? :ph34r:

I just want to make sure everyone is aware of the troubleshooter that works with undetected drives. It may not solve the issue, but it gets a great deal of the beginning, basic stuff out of the way, and it prevents missing little things at first.

Saludos, ToKuRo.

LOL! Nah, I think you're reading too much into it! I'm sure HE knows that there's an issue. I bet he's never seen such a spike in chatter over one line of drives before all this. But obviously as a rep of Seagate he can't admit to anything and he'd lose his job if he did. I wonder if how he sleeps ok at night tho...

But in all seriousness he's just trying to clear out traffic from anyone who might have an actually working drive or some other failure.

I work in IT support and too often end users complain about something broken when there's in fact nothing wrong with it. Seagate Forums don't have a specialized or niche tech audience like we have here. You would expect a wide range of competencies posting there.

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How about we find E-mails from Seagate managing people and write about the failing HDD problem directly. Cc: will be more visible. Additionally we could include some news agencies (BBS, CNN, etc.). I think then they will start taking the issue seriously - at least when the news would report about it, and share prices will drop.

1. collect E-mail addresses

2. compose the message

3. send.

Here are some news from Seagate site, also on 21st is coming.

From http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?loca...000f5ee0a0aRCRD

About Seagate > News > Press Releases > Seagate Technology Board Of Directors Appoints Chairman Stephen J. Luczo As President And Chief Executive Officer

Seagate Technology Board Of Directors Appoints Chairman Stephen J. Luczo As President And Chief Executive Officer

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