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The Solution for Seagate 7200.11 HDDs


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It worked!!! Brilliant!! :D :D :whistle: :whistle: :thumbup :thumbup

I can't thank you guys enough you've saved my bacon. Data is being copied while I type.

It would appear that patience is required on a job like this. I just waited and eventually I was able to enter data, weird.

All my wife's collages and designs are saved, she is overjoyed. (http://de.dawanda.com/shop/HelgaBerrillDesign?q=helgaberrilldesign)

Once again jaclaz thanks for your help, without you and the Canadian guy I would have been lost.

Chris

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Is it worth updating the firmware? I followed the link to it and downloaded the .exe and the iso. Am I right in thinking that I can just start the .exe and things will happen intuitively as long as I point to the right disc? Or is it better to use the iso? I am using a laptop and the sick drive was in a Seagate external drive.

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It worked!!! Brilliant!! :D

I can't thank you guys enough you've saved my bacon. Data is being copied while I type.

No prob :), glad to have contributed to another happy bunny in the basket:

It would appear that patience is required on a job like this. I just waited and eventually I was able to enter data, weird.

All my wife's collages and designs are saved, she is overjoyed. (http://de.dawanda.com/shop/HelgaBerrillDesign?q=helgaberrilldesign)

Once again jaclaz thanks for your help, without you and the Canadian guy I would have been lost.

Well, since your wife is a designer, I may ask you/her a happy bunny image to celebrate the success? :unsure:

About firmware, the bootable .iso is ALWAYS better (not because it is a .iso but because it provides a "simple", "clean" DOS environment).

Cannot say if the .iso will work "as is" with an external disk, though (I actually doubt it), possibly in your case you are forced to use the .exe from your running Windows, BUT what the thingy seemingly does (at least one of the version I saw) is to actually add a (tinycore) Linux to your system through some GRUB2 and - without having tested it - I wouldn't personally run that .exe on a "production machine".

Still personally, I would postpone the firmware updating until you can have a "normal" PC with that hard disk directly connected to it and run the .iso..

After all, the worse that can happen with the old firmware is that the drive bricks itself again, and you now know how to unbrick it.

jaclaz

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Cannot I do anything else? Like upgrading the firmware or something else with the Hyperterminal?

Please help me..

The "basic error" (besides the various attempts you made - particularly erasing the G-list), is/was to assume that an unbricked disk:

  1. still has a perfectly functional filesystem
  2. can still boot a "complex" OS like a NT one as it did before the bricking

Both the above are gratuitious assumptions. :w00t:

The whole point is WHY did it "brick itself" originally, if it bricked because of the original issue with the log entry, then those assumptions may be correct, if it bricked itself for any other reason those are VERY unlikely to represent reality.

The only thing that you can do (and that you should have done BEFORE attempting booting from the disk :ph34r: and before attempting accessing files on it's filesystem) is to image the disk on another disk (you will need a slightly larger disk, NTFS formatted (if using Windows) or EXT3/4 formatted (if using Linux) or clone it to a similarly sized disk, surely functional.

You would normally use datarescuedd (Windows) or dd_rescue or ddrescue (Linux) and try to image the whole disk, if needed in "chunks".

Once the filesystem has been transferred (hopefully successfully and the whole of it) on a surely functional media, then you start attempting recovery of the filesystem (if possible) or recovery of the files in it (still as possible).

If you need help in doing the above, please start a new thread, as once the disk is not anymore BSY or LBA0, it exits the scope of the present thread.

jaclaz

Dear jaclaz,

thank you for your answer! Seems like you are the only person who is still helping in this thread! Maybe I should explain what happened first.. On a night I turned off my computer... In the next day I came back home and whoops, my drive was not shown in BIOS! And then everything happened like I wrote earlier.. Now back to my drive.. The main confusing part is that, first my drive will not shown in the bios (everytime) but when I restart over CTRL+ALT+DEL than it will shown up.. I really don't understand that.. And now I started the other drive, which is working.. But in the device manager is not shown any other drive.. What now? I really don't know what to do.. Please help! Thanks much!

Kind regards Arman!

Edited by arman95
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The main confusing part is that, first my drive will not shown in the bios (everytime) but when I restart over CTRL+ALT+DEL than it will shown up.. I really don't understand that.. And now I started the other drive, which is working.. But in the device manager is not shown any other drive.. What now? I really don't know what to do.. Please help! Thanks much!

The issue generally speaking is that the BIOS "interrogates" the hard disk at boot time (or reboot with CTRL+ALT+DEL) and the disk should reply with some info.

If it is in BSY state (or any other of a list of issues) the hard disk does not reply and the BIOS does not see it.

In some cases, for *whatever* reason, an "unbricked" disk foes not show in BIOS but is found if connected to a running system through an USB adapter (or viceversa, it is seen in BIOS but not through the USB adapter).

It is possible that - again for *whatever* reasons that the disk is very slow in replying to the interrogation and thus it is recognized only once every n boots or it is recognized only if you do a CTRL+ALT+DEL immediately after having initiated booting (or do it several times).

As I see it the only possibilty is to try again and when you manage to get it recognised dd it's contents to a new disk.

Once the data (or as much data as possible) will be residing on a fully working disk, then attempt recovering it.

If you look a bit around in this forum:

http://www.msfn.org/board/forum/169-hard-drive-and-removable-media-issues/

you will find quite a few similar cases, some successful :), some failed :(, of this approach, so that you get an idea of the things that need to be done.

jaclaz

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@jaclaz

Once again thanks for all your help. No designer bunnies on the horizon but here is a happy top dog. Who said you couldn't teach old dogs new tricks :yes: It just take a little longer sometimes :rolleyes:

post-378094-0-69233100-1369385201_thumb.

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@jaclaz

Once again thanks for all your help. No designer bunnies on the horizon but here is a happy top dog. Who said you couldn't teach old dogs new tricks :yes: It just take a little longer sometimes :rolleyes:

Of course it depends on the particular dog, some can even be happy bunnies (in the basket) ;):

pink-bunny-dog-shirt-and-hat-by-dogo-3511.jpg

And, for NO apparent reason, camouflage :w00t: example!

bunny_dog.jpg

:lol:

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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hi there,

first many many thx for your wonderful thread here !! :hello:

i´ve just signed up only for this reason..

okay, hope u can help me a little bit , only one short question:

got a ST31500341AS SD17, unusual "clack" at startup but was fully okay, saw it under computer-administration->everything wonderful but little "freezes" (it was on Vista btw..afterwards i´ve read that it could maybe a Vista-Problem..)

Okay, lets do a short firmware upgrade to SD1A or SD1B (done the same a months ago with a 500GB Samsung because the SB950 has sometimes trouble with some special Samsungs with particular firmwares..that was a "thing" of 5 min and everything was wonderful)

so long story, short sense, found the right firmware on .iso but my model has a -500 at the end and the update works only for -300 -303 etc..;drive was not recognized..

okay read an article about manually flashing with sf - ....*.lod etc...

started it "...sending data..", waited 5 min and nothing happens...wait another 5 min, nothing happens..->shutdown..

restart and no wonder->was gone in the bios and it "clacks" 3 1/2 times and that was it...

okay, we now a have a "corrupt" firmware...can i try to use these method (Seagate 7200.11 fix) here to re-flash/initialize the drive also with a corrupted firmware ?

as far as i understand, because we have parts of the firmware on the PCB and parts on the platter, the PCB will completely write a new firmware-section on the platter or am i wrong ?(or did i destroy the firmware on the PCB ??)

many thanx in advance and many greets from here !! :rolleyes:

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Help me, Obi-Jaclaz-Kenobi, you're my only hope !

... well, more a bit of a concern actually. Lazy as I am (and since all my 4 drives were full to the last bit) only now I got to upgrade the firmware to 3 of my BSY bug affected drives (didn't want to risk the upgrade with data on them). I downloaded the DOS disk utility, ran it, was a pain in the butt since it was very hard to work with it, but bottom line is I (weird choice of words) selected Download data option from the menu and my 500 GB drive got the SD1A firmware and one of my 640 GB (the third hasn't been applied yet), got SD3B. :blink: Should I be worried ? Is this ok ?

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Help me, Obi-Jaclaz-Kenobi, you're my only hope !

... well, more a bit of a concern actually. Lazy as I am (and since all my 4 drives were full to the last bit) only now I got to upgrade the firmware to 3 of my BSY bug affected drives (didn't want to risk the upgrade with data on them). I downloaded the DOS disk utility, ran it, was a pain in the butt since it was very hard to work with it, but bottom line is I (weird choice of words) selected Download data option from the menu and my 500 GB drive got the SD1A firmware and one of my 640 GB (the third hasn't been applied yet), got SD3B. :blink: Should I be worried ? Is this ok ?

Who knows?

I really have NO idea what you are talking about. :w00t:

Last time I checked it the DOS utility to upgrade the firmware (which is also the ONLY safe way to update it) had no "menu", let alone a "Download data option" in it. :unsure:

jaclaz

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