The Solution for Seagate 7200.11 HDDs

[michael chiklis]

Hello,

i've a barracuda 7200.11 ST31000333AS hard drive which had the busy issue.

I was able to fix it with the rs232/TTL adapter and hyper terminal.

I repaired baracudas 7200.11 in the past with the same problem, but i hade different message in hyper terminal.

This barracuda has lc15 firmware had the orrible tick tick head noise which made me fought that the issue was in dead heads (not the firmware), but for curusity i tried to do the firmware fix and it worked, no more tick ticks and bios recognize it again

So no bad heads!

The strange message i had in hyperterminal for the ST31000333AS, was at the end which says "Zone re-format was skipped"

It never happened with barracudas.

It's normal?

Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000333AS firmware LC15 (BUSY error + ticking heads)

But the "Zone re-format was skipped" wasn't the only strange thing!

As yuo can see in the pic i had at the begin the "ASCII Diag Mode" message which i never had with the barracudas procedure.

Another difference between this and the others barracudas was the time it took to format the user partition; barracuda usually take's about 2 minutes, some time few seconds, but this one take about 5 minutes.

Edited October 22, 2011 by michael chiklis

[jaclaz]

It's normal?

Hard to say.

It may depend from some differences in firmware, but I think it has to deal with the fact that you didn't actually "fix" the issue with it's "proper" cure, I mean, unlike the "classical" fix, which is the fix for a given illness, in your case the procedure worked as a side effect, very like the note in read-me-first::

Notwithstanding the above, this info may be useful to solve a number of similar problems on a whole range of similar hard disks, but in this case information here needs to be checked and verified if applies to your different HD.

In other words your mileage may (and WILL) vary.

Viewing the results and reports on this thread, the procedure is starting to look NOT as a "full reset" of the disk, meaning that it is not a "complete initialization", but rather a "partial one", or if you prefer something like a "warm boot" as opposed to a "cold" one.

Just hypothesys, mind you, but it is possible that when the firmware gets into a LBA0 or BSY state a "flag" or "registry" or whatever is set in such a way that when the "m0,2,2,,,,,22" command is issued, the zone-reformat is NOT skipped, whilst when a completely different kind of problem happens (such as the ticking heads) this flag is reset to "skip zone re-format".

Think at it just like the "dirty" bit that triggers (or triggers not) autoochk/chkdsk on NTFS volumes.

About the time needed, there are reports ranging from a few seconds to several minutes, so that appears "normal" (within the limits of our partial knowledge/experience).

To this you add that we don't know WHAT actually happens during this time as we don't actually know the actual status of the disk before the fix, expecially when the fix is used as a solution to a non-LBA0 and non-BSY issue.

jaclaz

Edited October 16, 2011 by jaclaz

[michael chiklis]

Excuse me i was wrong.

The hard drive with tick heads and busy fw which i repaired with the firmware solution was not a diamondmax 22, but a barracuda 7200.11 ST31000333AS with firmware LC15.

The diamondmax22 i fixed few days ago had only busy error and gave me normale message (no Zone re-format was skipped message and no ASCII Diag Mode message).

Edited October 16, 2011 by michael chiklis

[MArijo]

Hello to all,

I have a problem updating firmware on ST3500320AS.

First my disc got bricked and entered BSY error. Then I realized that I'm not the only one with this problem. Bios didn't want to recognize it, etc, etc.

I have followed instructions from this forum and bought necessary stuff, successfully unlock my Seagate 7200.11 and now the disc is working again, data is intact, Bios can detect it and WIndows also.

But problem is when I want to update firmware from SD15 to SD1A.

I have downloaded that bootable ISO image with Seagate firmware update utility from Seagate website. Disconnected everything except Seagate disc which I need to update and my DVD drive.

Comp is restarted and it enters that Free DOS firmware update utility.

Then I press S (for scan the drive), but it doesn't find any disc. Of course pressing A (update firmware to ST3500320AS) is also not working because it can't find any disc.

After that I shut down everything, connect my Maxtor drive (Windows drive), removed boot disc from DVD drive. Enter windows, and downloaded Seagate firmware update utility for Windows (also from seagate web).

Start that, read everything, next, next, comp restarts and enters again in some DOS utility slightly different then this first bootable one. After that it just said that the disc inside is Maxtor and not Seagate, and won't update again.

I think that Dos wont recognize my SATA Seagate (Maxtor is that flat wide cable (IDE I suppose or something) because there is no drivers or something like that.

MB is Intel DQ35MP

Setup under Advanced drive setting:

NATIVE (cant change to anything more)

AHCI (can change this to IDE or RAID)

SMART Enabled (can change this to disabled)

If I change from AHCI to IDE I can choose from NATIVE to LEGACY. No matter what I choose, comp locks during boot and wont even go further from screen where I'm presing F2 to enter BIOS. I need to disconnect everything so I can even enter BIOS,and revert settings.

Also tried ti disable SMART, same thing. Nothing helps.

Don't know how to solve this. Please help!

[MArijo]

I have solved the problem.. transfered disc to older computer, adjusted settings in BIOS, and utility successfully recognized the drive.

[JordyB]

I am unfortunate enough to have a Seagate hard drive. I have a 7200.11 with LC11 firmware. It became undetectable in the bios and of course xp around 2 week ago.

I have followed the instructions, made up the cables etc but when I run HyperTerminal and type in control Z followed by /2 and then Z I don't get the SPIN DOWN message all I get is LED:0000000CC FAddr:0025BE0F. This scrolls down the screen about 1 line every minute and locks me out of the interface.

Does anyone have a solution?

Can anyone help?

Sorry to reignite such an old discussion but this is the only post I can find that is experiencing the LED:0000000CC FAddr:0025BE0F problem. I am getting the exact same error when I try to spin down the motor. Did you ever find a solution for this?

Thanks for your help.

[jaclaz]

Sorry to reignite such an old discussion but this is the only post I can find that is experiencing the LED:0000000CC FAddr:0025BE0F problem. I am getting the exact same error when I try to spin down the motor. Did you ever find a solution for this?

Thanks for your help.

NOT an answer, only "general advice".

WHICH set of contacts are you insulating? (try the "other" set)

http://www.mapleleafmountain.com/seagatebrick.html

(Note: Some guides on the web have suggested insulating the *other* set of contacts (the "head" contacts) you see in the lower left of the above photo to the right. I tried this originally and it didn't work for me but obviously others have had some success with it. In *my* case, with 1TB model drives, I can assure you that insulating the slightly easier to access motor contacts worked where the head contacts method didn't. I suspect the specific model of your drive will account for the varying levels of the results so if one way doesn't work for you, think about trying the other. You'll know to look here if the HyperTerminal session won't allow you to spin down the drive and continues to give you the BSY error in reply - "LED:01...blah blah blah". If you're allowed to spin down the drive, then this bit isn't your issue.)

jaclaz

[Huygens]

I un-bricked my Seagate Barracuda HD 7200.11 500 Gb, ST3500320AS, S/N: 9QM8QNCP, firmware SD15, which had the BSY error (not found by BIOS).

I bought almost all my hardware from ebay, most of the HW was sent from Hong Kong (to Europe). I used Windows XP, SP 3 and Hyperterminal.

First I tried to use two different USB-to-TLL adapters. The first one, the red in lower part of the picture, was DOA, a dud. The second one worked nicely in loopback mode, but only produced the arrow character (in Hyperterminal) when run against the HD.

The red adapter, a FTDI FT232BM/BL chip, which required a USB cable (A-male to B-female), never worked and was never detected by Windows. The green-blue adapter, a Prolific PL2303 chip worked in loopback only.

When the USB-to-TTL Prolific adapter was used, it produced the ARROW character in Hyperterminal. My guess is that the USB-TTL adapter sent signals at 5 Volts level and required 5 Volts responses, but maybe the HD only could send 3.3 Volts signals, so the Prolific USB-TTL adapter didn't work. So for people having problem with only getting an arrow prompter, switch to an adapter which sends and receives signals around 3.3 Volts.

Now to my solution, mostly following Gradius, with the exception for the placement of the paper piece under the HD PCB.

My torx screws on my HD were so hard stuck that I had to turn my torx screw driver with a wrench. In the picture I've placed my magnetic iron wrench dangerously close to my HD. Don't do this at home. And yes, the HD is placed on my anti-static free bed.

The paper on the HD is a piece cut out from a shoe box, so yes again, I repaired my Seagate HD with a shoe box.

I also used a 2 feet long Molex cable for power (connected to the PCs power supply), here with the HD SATA power cable piece connected at the end. I never managed to separated them after having un-bricked my HD.

I used a MAX3232 RS232-to-TTL adapter on the HD side. I soldered the minus side of the battery holder by a wire to the ground of the screw holder of the RS232 plug on the adapters circuit board. The plus side of the batteries where connected to the VCC pin on the upper side of the RS232-TTL adapter. The ground pin on the upper side of the RS232-to-TTL adapter was used to connect ground to my HD. So I connected two cables to ground on the adapter circuit card, one to the minus pole of the batteries and the other ground to the ground of the HD.

On the PC side I used a USB-RS232 adapter, which I think is based on a Prolific chip (note, this Prolific adapter was USB-RS232, not the failed/arrow USB-TTL prolific mentioned earlier). The USB-RS232 was molded into nice clear green-blue plastic + connected to a short USB A-male to A-female cable.

The prolific USB-RS232 adapter needed a driver installation and I also opened the HW lister in XP (Control Panel/System/HW) and raised the adapter's transfer speed to 38400 bps, serial port COM5.

I used three "1.5 Volts" batteries, which gave a total of 4.01 Volts (not exactly the sum of 1.5 * 3). I guess the voltage has to be between 3.0 - 4.5 Volts for this adapter to work smoothly with the HD.

I used a bloody amount of grinding with sandpaper on my jumper cable ends to make them fit into (over) the HD pins.

In the picture you can also see the shoe box piece and how far I inserted it under the circuit board, and yes I put it under the Head connections, but I suspect that the Motor connection was also broken because the paper was so thick and really raised the PCB.

At first I got a lot of garbage in Hyperterminal, even in loopback mode, when speed was higher than 4800 bps, then I discovered that the batteries were not properly connected. So connect your batteries correctly if you get garbage in Hyperterminal while doing the loopback test!

Here is my Hyperterminal session, I started by pressing CTRL-Z:

F3 T>/2

F3 2>Z

Spin Down Complete
Elapsed Time 0.139 msecs
F3 2>U

Spin Up Complete
Elapsed Time 6.473 secs
F3 2>/1

F3 1>N1

F3 1>

I removed the shoe box piece and tighten the torx screws as Gradius recommended after spin down.

At end I ripped the power connection to the HD and some funny sparks flew and I heard "knittering" sound. Maybe I should have powered down my PC instead? Anyway, I waited 60 seconds before putting back the SATA power cable into my HD. I then disconnected and reconnected Hyperterminal, pressed CTRL-Z, then ran the dangerous command:

F3 T>m0,2,2,0,0,0,0,22
Max Wr Retries = 00, Max Rd Retries = 00, Max ECC T-Level = 00, Max Certify Rewr
ite Retries = 0000
User Partition Format   5% complete, Zone 00, Pass 00, LBA 00008DED, ErrCode 000
00080, Elapsed Time 0 mins 05 secs
User Partition Format Successful - Elapsed Time 0 mins 05 secs

F3 T>

I then installed my HD and backed up my data. It worked like a charm.

Then I wanted to update the firmware to SD1A, but found the following:

Article from Tom's Hardware on firmware bricking Seagate HDs

Locked Seaget forum thread, indicating a complete formware mess

Tom's Hardware writes: "A time of writing, 100 percent of users who attempted the update have bricked their drives with the new firmware, rather than preventing failure."

Does this mean I shouldn't update my firmware on my 500 Gb 7200.11 HD?

Edited November 4, 2011 by Huygens

[jaclaz]

Then I wanted to update the firmware to SD1A, but found the following:

Article from Tom's Hardware on firmware bricking Seagate HDs

Locked Seaget forum thread, indicating a complete formware mess

Tom's Hardware writes: "A time of writing, 100 percent of users who attempted the update have bricked their drives with the new firmware, rather than preventing failure."

Does this mean I shouldn't update my firmware on my 500 Gb 7200.11 HD?

You seem like having gone through ALL the loopholes ALREADY documented in the READ-ME-FIRST (which obviously you haven'ìt read first, as each and every problem you got - and solved : - was ALREADY there along with good advice on how to avoid them):

Updating the firmware is NOT the higher priority, NO, just in case:

BUT we don't have any reliable record about updating the firmware bricking the hard disk, so as long as you use a correct new firmware it should work allright.

The article you linked to is dated january 2009 , in the meantime we went a little ahead of that .

jaclaz

[Huygens]

Then I wanted to update the firmware to SD1A, but found the following:

Article from Tom's Hardware on firmware bricking Seagate HDs

Locked Seaget forum thread, indicating a complete formware mess

Tom's Hardware writes: "A time of writing, 100 percent of users who attempted the update have bricked their drives with the new firmware, rather than preventing failure."

Does this mean I shouldn't update my firmware on my 500 Gb 7200.11 HD?

You seem like having gone through ALL the loopholes ALREADY documented in the READ-ME-FIRST (which obviously you haven'ìt read first...

I read the READ-ME-FIRST several times, but:

1. It doesn't help you in any obvious way to decide exactly what adapter to buy if you go the USB-to-TTL-adapter road. And the adapters may also have different configurations (yes, also the RS232-to-TTL may vary). Not to mention being DOA, having been sent in a squeezed small package half around the globe.

2. I read it several times, and it's not simple to absorb all details from.

3. I t doesn't mention that you shouldn't solder to the pins on your HD's PCB, which I tried first, before sandpapering my jumper cable ends.

Updating the firmware is NOT the higher priority, NO, just in case:

BUT we don't have any reliable record about updating the firmware bricking the hard disk, so as long as you use a correct new firmware it should work allright.

The article you linked to is dated january 2009 , in the meantime we went a little ahead of that .

jaclaz

Seagate still issues the same firmeware version, SD1A for ST3500320AS, as they did at the time, 2009.

The same version, SD1A, which was reported in Tom's Hardware to have a 100 % brick-ratio on ST3500320AS (500 Gb) HDs, but apparently worked in some cases on 1 Tb and 1.5 Tb HDs.

I would also like to point out that providing my Model No and S/N to the on-line Seagate Find-Firmware web page, I constantly got an error message for both my HDs, and yes I triple and quadruple checked that I provided the correct numbers. My guess is that Seagate knows that SD1A bricks an ST3500320AS (500 Gb Barracuda 7200.11) but doesn't inform the reader, and instead replies with an error code on the Find-Firmware page to obscure the problem. I have given my Model No and S/N at start of my first post, for anybody to validate. Also, Seagate has protected the Find-Firmware page with a RECHAPTCHA code, perhaps to avoid anyone from trying too loop over sequences of S/N:s to figure out if any ST3500320AS HDs will be reported as having a valid firmware?

The Firmware-Finder can be reaches by clicking "Use our serial number check utility" at http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207951 then clicking "Click here to use the download finder." and a pop-up window will appear.

[Huygens]

I am unfortunate enough to have a Seagate hard drive. I have a 7200.11 with LC11 firmware. It became undetectable in the bios and of course xp around 2 week ago.

I have followed the instructions, made up the cables etc but when I run HyperTerminal and type in control Z followed by /2 and then Z I don't get the SPIN DOWN message all I get is LED:0000000CC FAddr:0025BE0F. This scrolls down the screen about 1 line every minute and locks me out of the interface.

Does anyone have a solution?

Can anyone help?

Sorry to reignite such an old discussion but this is the only post I can find that is experiencing the LED:0000000CC FAddr:0025BE0F problem. I am getting the exact same error when I try to spin down the motor. Did you ever find a solution for this?

Have you removed the PCB and placed it on a non-conducting/isolated surface and then given the spin-down command? If you still experience an error, I guess you may have some serious problem with your PCB. If not, your measure for isolating the PCB from the Motor or Head contacts is insufficient. Don't use conducting cardboard paper, haha.

What's your HDs Model No?

See also LED error - too quick input(?)

Edited November 4, 2011 by Huygens

[jaclaz]

3. I t doesn't mention that you shouldn't solder to the pins on your HD's PCB, which I tried first, before sandpapering my jumper cable ends.

Please find here OTHER things it doesn't mention (by design).

I will repeat how we do not have here (and we are supposedly more up-to-date than Tom's hardware's article on this specific topic) any report about problems after updating the firmware to SD1A.

This does not in any way guarantee it will work on your drive, nor that it is actually adviced.

jaclaz

[ominouswanderer]

Not sure if anyone can help me but was hoping someone might be able to point me in the right direction... I have read every page of this thread as well as every other post I could find on google since I am stuck. I have seen people having similar problems but have not found a definitive answer on how to fox it. I am getting the following in my terminal window:

F3 T>/2

F3 2>Z

Spin Down Complete

Elapsed Time 0.147 msecs

F3 2>U (enter)

Error 1009 DETSEC 00006008

Spin Error

Elapsed Time 7 mins 27 secs

R/W Status 2 R/W Error 84150180

The hard drive is making a small hum every 3 seconds like it is trying to spin and then stops. There is no grinding, clicking, clacking, beeping or the like, just a small hum. I have tried cleaning the connections and have done the process probably 10 times now and it keeps coming up with the same error message. I have also tried rotating the hard drive while it is trying to spin up and no luck there either. I do not know if there is something wrong with my PCB or the motor driver or what.

I am at a complete loss at this point and am looking for any advice possible. There is confidential data on the hard drive that I need to recover so data recovery services are out of the question unless they were to simply repair the hard drive and not simply just extract the data.

Any help is graciously appreciated.

[dencorso]

OK. Well... Let's start again: Which Hard Drive exactly are you trying to fix, and what sympoms did it exhibit before you started trying to fix it?

[ominouswanderer]

I apologize... Let me back up then-

I am trying to fix a Seagate 7200.11 500Gb hard drive that is an OEM from an HP computer.

I had the hard drive installed in my desktop as a secondary data hard drive and one day it just stopped working and wasn't showing up in the bios. I opened up the computer and could hear the hard drive humming every 3 seconds when the computer was trying to start up. I have tried it in multiple computers as well as in external bays and it does the same thing no matter where I put it.