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Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 Troubles


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WOW!! I am completely impressed! All of you are completely awesome!!! So unlike all those d**kheads over on the HDD Guru forums. The sharing of information like what's happening in this forum is eactly the reason the interweb (LOL) exists. I wish I possessed the knowledge and skills of the software end like some of you do, however I don't have the time to dedicate to full time learning to obtain it (wife + two kids + 60 hour a week full time job). I may not have drive failure YET, but I'm waiting for it to happen. And a big THANK YOU to all who are working towards, and FINDING, a solution so I'll know either what to do to fix it, or who to send it to for a reasonable amount of money to get it fixed. I'm an electronic technician, so I have no problem grabbing a chip, connectors, resistors, and transistors for breadboarding a serial interface and cable. I just don't have extensive knowledge of the serial commands. I do however have guys here at work that can code in C++ and JAVA. So if/when pichi figures out the commands to send through hyperterminal, there might be a possibility I can get one of these guys to write a simple program to take care of everything. I can't guarantee that though. But it's starting to look like there is light at the end of the tunnel now!!

Once again, THANK YOU to all that made positive contributions to data gathering and finding a solution!!! You completely ROCK!!!

I have started a brute force attack to the rar file with a password recovery utility to try to find the password...

I'm running a 1-7 digit numerical brute force, and an English dictionary brute force with smart mutations in ARCHPR right now.

If it don't find anything with the standard wordlist, I'm gonna try some of the ones here:

http://www.theargon.com/achilles/wordlists/

keep us updated.

Hey, perhaps this could be a distributed thing if we coordinate on the program for the attack. I can pause BOINC and install this program and attack it too. We can coordinate the break points of the dictionary attacks and post them here in case anyone else wants to help. It could then be updated as to whether that particular section is taken, reserved, or completed.

I'm running a QX6700 at stock speed with Vista Ultimate 64. I used to have my system overclocked to until I started getting BSOD's. Just a few days I ago figured out it was my soundcard causing "Uncorrectable Hardware Errors" and removed it. Now I just need to start overclocking again...

What do you think of the distributed attack idea?

Edited by puntoMX
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What do you think of the distributed attack idea?

That would be great, except none of the RAR password recovery tools are multi-threaded, so my quad core is working at 1/4 possible load. At this rate the "english with smart mutations" is gonna take about 20hrs.

If anyone can find a GPU (Cuda) powered RAR recovery program, please let us know. Those chips brute force about 20 times faster than consumer CPUs.

By the way, this is all assuming the password is actually a WORD. A true brute force would take a few decades.

So unlike all those d**kheads over on the HDD Guru forums.

Yeah, those pillocks a complete cun*s. As soon as they start to figure something out, there's as storm of back peddling and covering up/post removals, as it may affect their "bread and butter". WTF is the point of having a help forum if any actual "help" is removed on the grounds that it's bad for their bottom line. Pr*cks, the lot of em.

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Hi,

my 7200.11 1tb hdd is still working, but it has the sd15 firmware and comes from thailand too :(

Have anybody a firmware update for the model: 9BX158-303 or knows if i can use the CC1H or SD1A update?

BR

Starvirus

Edited by Starvirus
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What do you think of the distributed attack idea?

...this is all assuming the password is actually a WORD. A true brute force would take a few decades.

Yeah, I doubt it's a word, especially one using English characters. I'll bet it's a Chinese character set which would take eons since they have well over 3000 characters in traditional. It would definitely be killer if someone could find a GPU powered solution. I've got two 8800GTX's in SLi (I miss 3DFX). :)

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Hi,

my 7200.11 1tb hdd is still working, but it has the sd15 firmware and comes from thailand too :(

Have anybody a firmware update for the model: 9BX158-303 or knows if i can use the CC1H or SD1A update?

BR

Starvirus

I wouldn't do that. Those updates were to address a different problem and I believe are centered around a different type of platter also (not 100% positive though).

What do you think of the distributed attack idea?

That would be great, except none of the RAR password recovery tools are multi-threaded, so my quad core is working at 1/4 possible load. At this rate the "english with smart mutations" is gonna take about 20hrs...

If I remember correctly, I needed to crack a password last year sometime. I divided the dictionary by four and started four instances of the program so each could have one core of the processor...

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If I remember correctly, I needed to crack a password last year sometime. I divided the dictionary by four and started four instances of the program so each could have one core of the processor...

Just found a 2 GB word list. Gonna crank my quad to 3.6 and do exactly as you suggested. :thumbup

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Lots of people are confused by the firmware update seagate issued earlier LAST year to adress another problem in drives with the SD04 and SD14 firmware.. Guess everyone is pretty desperate to get rid of SD15..

As stated at the official seagate website:

**Why not just put firmware updates online with public links?

There are four main reasons:

1. Field support for firmware updates involves robust and compatible tools, backwards compatibility and data safety. These features are designed into Enterprise class SAS, Fibre Channel and SAS interface disc drives. Desktop and Mobile SATA and PATA drives are not designed for firmware updates in the field. Very often what looks like a newer version of firmware, by the number, may actually be incompatible with previous versions. If incompatible firmware is copied to an earlier version of the same model, data loss or drive ruin will result.**

So don't perform updates which are incompatible with your present firmware version. If the update is for SD15 drives it will say so. Read carefully!

Same problem here - bought two of the 1TB versions a couple of months ago (ST31000340AS), and one has already failed. I e-mailed Seagate for the firmware update so I can salvage the other drive... we'll see how long that takes. Ridiculous that they don't just make it available for download.

I ran across a supposed copy of the firmware update on just one web page, and wondered if anyone knew anything about it. The file name is NEWEGG8h_SD1Acopy.zip and it creates three files:

8h_SD1A.lod dated 11/18/08

8HSD1A.BAT dated 11/18/08

SF.EXE dated 08/05/08

Thanks for all the good info. here!

Edited by DerSnoezie
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I was at a local computershop last night and they had just RMA:d one Seagate 500GB and one 1TB drive with this error. Unfortunately they had already packed them so I couldnt note the specifics of the drives. All I know is that they were bought in November and failed in the last week of December and the first week of January.

Scary stuff

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There is a story about this on digg here:

http://digg.com/hardware/Seagate_7200_11_S...e_owners_BEWARE

The more people that "digg" it up, the more potential it'll get a lot more exposure.

There is a local TV station that has ads for their consumer advocacy team. I'm considering calling them to see if they can light a fire under Seagate's arse. I doubt it, but hey it's worth a shot.

But for those of you with digg accounts, PLEASE digg that story link above. And if you have a few minutes and aren't a member, consider registering on there briefly and digging it up, if only to increase exposure of this horrible problem that Seagate seems to want to sweep under the rug.

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Just a thought... instead of trying to crack the password, is anyone on the forums well versed enough with low level Windows device driver stuff, such that they can write an ATA sniffer to see what commands are being sent from the HDDoctor software? Perhaps that's another way to get at the solution... at least that one is proven, whereas this one may or may not be real... Just a thought...

What do you think of the distributed attack idea?

...this is all assuming the password is actually a WORD. A true brute force would take a few decades.

Yeah, I doubt it's a word, especially one using English characters. I'll bet it's a Chinese character set which would take eons since they have well over 3000 characters in traditional. It would definitely be killer if someone could find a GPU powered solution. I've got two 8800GTX's in SLi (I miss 3DFX). :)

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Wow, so much creative ideas! Excellent!

Just a thought... instead of trying to crack the password, is anyone on the forums well versed enough with low level Windows device driver stuff, such that they can write an ATA sniffer to see what commands are being sent from the HDDoctor software? Perhaps that's another way to get at the solution... at least that one is proven, whereas this one may or may not be real... Just a thought...
What do you think of the distributed attack idea?

...this is all assuming the password is actually a WORD. A true brute force would take a few decades.

Yeah, I doubt it's a word, especially one using English characters. I'll bet it's a Chinese character set which would take eons since they have well over 3000 characters in traditional. It would definitely be killer if someone could find a GPU powered solution. I've got two 8800GTX's in SLi (I miss 3DFX). :)

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Hello,

i'm new here...brought to you via Google-Search...

Well after many years of using only Seagate Drives, and only one failure...(and that drive went down after being 8 years in constant use...)

my ST3500320AS, bought August 2008, went down 10 Jan 09...with the wellknown symptoms...PC works fine, I reboot, the drive is no longer recognised by the BIOS...

I made a funny discovery though...I have a second ST3500320AS, which has the SD25 firmware...so I switched the PCBs, and the dead drive was recognised in the BIOS as ST3500320AS with SD25 firmware, i was happy, thought myself very lucky...but Windows,and any other OS btw, said "NO!!!"...

and told me the drive has 0GB capacity...

Now I am constantly observing the NET for solutions, because I wont give up my data on this Drive...

Here are the specs for your list:

9QM5HVYL:ST3500320AS:9BX154-303:SD15:09077:KRATSG:Aug08:10Jan09:D3m3nt0r:Germany

Edited by D3m3nt0r
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Just a thought... instead of trying to crack the password, is anyone on the forums well versed enough with low level Windows device driver stuff, such that they can write an ATA sniffer to see what commands are being sent from the HDDoctor software? Perhaps that's another way to get at the solution... at least that one is proven, whereas this one may or may not be real... Just a thought...

A. We are not cracking anything. That would be illegal and a violation of forum rues. What we are trying to do is recover a password to a publicly available file. :whistle:

B. An ATA/Serial sniffer has been suggested a dozen times, but first we need someone with an HD Doctor who is willing to do that. But you are right, that would be the best solution to this problem. :thumbup

Edited by Fuzzy_3D
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