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The Solution for Seagate 7200.11 HDDs


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@gogeta: Did you shut off the power für 10sek, as it stand in the description on page 5?

 

My Maxtor DiamondMax22 works again.

 

 

BIG THANKS!

Edited by Entarger
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Hello digital warriors!! Hard to believe but it's been FIVE YEARS since this whole bricked drive mess started. Jaclaz, you Jedi Drive Master you. I see you're still jousting with the newcomers who refuse to read properly. You're unstoppable man. Well done you!

 

I popped in because I'm shifting some web things around and mapleleaf mountain (with my guide included) will soon evaporate into the ether. But Don't Panic!

 

I couldn't leave you folks hanging. I still get one or two emails a month with successful unbrickings so I wanted to keep the content up on the interwebs for people to access and use. Since there's not really any need to 'update' the guide per se (the method hasn't changed in years), I've merely refreshed it to clear a few broken links and made it into a 2mb downloadable .pdf file complete with the same instructions and photos you see now (I might have added one or two more jokes since I had a few ciders open while I worked last night). The whole thing is parked out on a Google drive page anyone can access found here:

 

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5DyuVvuODctc2R4bDJJT19rMDQ/

 

(jaclaz, I was going to update the thread that has the old mapleleafmountain pointer but it's locked, I'm guessing you have the keys to the kingdom and can update it for these kind folks?)

 

I'll happily leave the guide there until all these drives finally die. Google seems to be the omnipresent cloud beast for the forseeable future so it should be safe there. Clicking on the link will give you a 'preview' of the file and you can then download a proper copy for your very own with the controls at the top of the page. I notice that the links within the guide don't function in the 'preview' but work fine once you have the .pdf on your local machine.

 

I just last week retired my final 7200.11 from the backup cabinet so despite the firmware screwup, I can't complain about getting my use out of them over the years. My world is now all about growing a 25-acre orchard of apples and pears and berries I bought a while back and generally doing garden things that have nothing whatsoever to do with hard drives. Putting in wine grapes next year even. The cats are still happy and send their regards. It's a good gig up here in Canada.

 

I wish you all well with your continued electronic repair work. Just remember the golden rule and DON'T PANIC!

 

Cheers!

 

Carter In Canada

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Good news :), though if you hadn't banned robots.txt from your site (WHY? :w00t:), by now it would have been indexed/backed up by the Wayback Machine.
If the site is going to evaporate not-so-soon, there may still be time for it to be mirrored/saved.

Regards to you (and to the cats of course).

JFYI ;):


http://tisotit.blogspot.it/2012/02/random-pics-from-my-hard-drive.html
pissed+cat.jpg



jaclaz

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Well, I seem a few years late to the party here, but just the other day my Seagate 1TB drive experienced what I believe to be the BSY error. One minute I was in Windows 7, viewing files through Explorer, and as I tried to open a file the entire volume disappeared. After a bit of investigation I realized the drive no longer appeared in BIOS, which led me to research the issue online, and brought me here.

My model is ST31000340AS with firmware SD15.

 

I've spent many hours reading documents, hundreds of posts on this blog, the README file, and watching youtube videos, etc. I believe I understand the process to attempt to fix the drive but am hung up on something mundane. The drive has data that unfortunately I've not backed up recently; recovery of the data is very important to me.

 

I recently purchased a UBS/Serial/TTL hardware device from ebay. My issue is that I can't seem to get the device to work, even in a loopback test. But I suspect I'm missing something obvious since the device is new and the seller has a good online rep, and seems to have sold dozens of such devices.

 

The symptom of my issue is that when I send a character (hex or text) on the tx line, I get a response on the rx line, but the response is always null (0x00). I've tried this on WinXP, Win 7, multiple USB ports, multiple versions of the driver (the device is based on an FTDI chip), and using multiple terminal apps (including SerialTrace which shows a wonderful verbose debug output of every event). I've modified baud rates, COM port numbers, etc. Either the device showed up DOA or I'm missing something.

 

btw, I have tried the device with the Seagate drive and I get no response; I've tried it with the drive controller board attached to the physical drive and with the board completely removed from the physical drive.

 

Can anyone help with the loopback test I'm experiencing?

Cheers

Edited by bobseag
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It is possible that the device is DOA, but what is the issue with the loopback test?

 

(the loopback test will be - obviously - totally independent from the transmission protocol/baud settings/etc, that are otherwise vital for communicating with the hard disk board).

 

How EXACTLY are you trying to perform it?

That would be point #8 of the read-me-first:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/143880-seagate-barracuda-720011-read-me-first/

 

There may have been an issue in installing the driver, but I doubt it, if the driver is installed correctly you should get an added (virtual) COM port.

 

Check if, by any chance, you are not selecting the right COM port, or if in your different attempts to install different drivers (why?) you created a conflict of some kind, but I also doubt it.

 

The device (if not DOA) will work:

  1. on XP
  2. with normal Terminal
  3. on any USB port

anything different from the above is an unneeded complication and/or a variation with no actual advantage of any kind (i.e. the idea is that if you don' t have XP then we replace - say - Terminal with Putty or something else).

 

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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Thanks for the very quick reply.

Unfortunately, it's not the COM port. I used the default port # that was assigned when the drivers installed, and that didn't work. Then I changed the port # in device mgr and in the terminal app (to match that given in devmgr) and that didn't help either.

Its strange that when I have the loopback wired up I can send a character out the tx line, and I can see something (null / 0x00) return. When I don't wire up the loopback and I send a character, I see the character go out the tx line, but nothing comes back on the rx line. I guess that's how it's supposed to work, but if the rx side of the device was experiencing a fault I would expect to receive nothing in return - regardless of whether I'd wired up a loopback between tx/rx.

I'm not prone to blame a brand new part, but I can't think of any other reasons this loopback test would fail.

Regards

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Actually that is exactly the way it should work (what you type is lost forever if there is no loopback), compare with:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/128807-the-solution-for-seagate-720011-hdds/page-48#entry851176

You have no way (without an oscilloscope or a TTL probe) to know if the issue is in the TX part (receiving characters from terminal but transmitting a single 0x00 instead) or if the issue is in the Rx part (receiving the characters fine by forwarding to terminal a single 0x00), it's a loop! ;)

If you have (in the drawer where you have things that might come into use) a Nokia CA-42 you could try with it.

Still, you have not fully excluded a "queer" issue with the actual driver install / OS install, if you could do just the loopback test on another PC (you won't do any damage to it obviously, and even a very old one will do nicely) it could help pinpointing the issue to a DOA adapter.

From the photos in the link you posted the stupid thingy has at least one led, how it behaves (when you send data through the terminal)?

Or has it more than one led?

jaclaz

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How I wish I had a drawer full of cables, old drive, boards, etc. I just moved countries and did a big cleanout, bringing only two computers and a few DVI cables with me. Ugh.

 

The driver/OS issue is something I've tested a bit. I've tested on a WinXP system with one set of drivers (for XP) and on a Windows 7 64bit system with two different versions of the manufacturer's drivers. None of these environments produced a successful loopback.

 

I didn't post photos but maybe you followed the link to the device I bought on ebay. The device has six leads and came with three cables - one for ground, and one each for tx/rx. It has a toggle to choose 3.3v or 5v and I've tried both during loopback tests, but am sticking with 3.3v. Also has a "power on" LED, which is lit constantly when cabled to a USB port, and two small leds for rx and tx, which light up when I transmit/receive (but again when I receive it's just 0x00).

 

I'm going to assume the device is DOA and either exchange or purchase something different.

 

btw, thanks for the (evidently) years of service you've put in to this blog. Once I get a functioning RS232/TTL device I hope to follow the rest of the instructions and get a working drive again. I may be back with other questions in the future....

 

Best Regards

Edited by bobseag
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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi - I have a BARRACUDA 7200.11 ST31500341AS 9JU138-302 with CC1H firmware that I think has the BSY issue (not showing up in BIOS).

Drive has been running 24/7 for the past 4.5 years as an FTPserver at work without any issues until yesterday.

Now, when first powered on it makes about 8-10 slow quiet tick tick noises and nothing. I've tried the drive in a USB caddy and my laptop wouldn't recongise it.

 

When I enter my serial number  on seagate.com it says I'm running the latest and indicates that this drive/firmware is not affected. But when I look at this the model number has update to SD1B  http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/207957en?language=en_US

 

Is my drive affected by the BSY bug? is it worth buying or is the drive just stuffed. http://www.ebay.com/itm/FT232BM-BL-Seagate-Barracuda-7200-11-Firmware-Fix-tool-complete-USB-powered-/280748167812?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item415de51284

 

I actually had a 1TB fail years ago with the BSY issue and found somebody local to me who lent me there cable and I was able to fix and then update firmware and that HDD is still running strong today..

 

Thanks

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Generally speaking the 8-10 (actually they are usually reported as 11 or 12 ticks correspond to a "click of death" :ph34r:(i.e. not BSY, not LBA0).

It is still possible (though improbable :() that the fixing routine, which is a form of "reset" of the disk drive firmware might help, but noone can really say.

If you have a backup of the data on the disk, just throw the stupid disk drive in the dustbin. (it is not even worth the attempt).

If you have not a backup of the data (and you need them), then you should consider attempting a recovery by a professional, which of course will cost you quite a bit of money, considering that the routine - if performed without results - might make recovery more difficult.

More or less what happens is that the disk when powered on attempts several times to read some key sectors on the actual disk surface, and clicks when it fails to read these data. This could been a defect/problem in the firmware (looking for the data in the "wrong" area), in the actual head or in the platter surface (please read as *anything* between US$ 300 and US$ 1,500 :w00t:).

Though, as said it is possible that the "generic" reset might work, if it is an issue with firmware, a professional may be able to "inject" the correct addresses (and this would be a relatively "easy" recovery, without needing to open the disk), if it is a head, a head transplant would be needed (opening physically the disk drive in a "clean room"), and if it's the actual platter it is possible that no data (or only partial data) can be recovered.

 

jaclaz 

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Thanks for the response Jaclaz

I fired up the drive and actually it is 11 clicks so it doesn't look good. I've already purchased the tool and its on its way, I will try but not expecting result to be favorable.

Edited by bosman
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jaclaz,

Thanks to you and other contributors for this thread. After having problems with a UBS/serial/TTL device, I returned it and received a new one. The loopback test that previously wasn't working (due to a faulty device) worked right away. I was able to recieve the short string of info from the drive that confirmed the existence of the BSY issue, then set to follow the steps in your process to recover the drive. In about 10 minutes the drive was recovered and my data is now safely backed up on another drive.

Many, many thanks for the help.

Cheers,

Bob

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jaclaz,

Thanks to you and other contributors for this thread. After having problems with a UBS/serial/TTL device, I returned it and received a new one. The loopback test that previously wasn't working (due to a faulty device) worked right away. I was able to recieve the short string of info from the drive that confirmed the existence of the BSY issue, then set to follow the steps in your process to recover the drive. In about 10 minutes the drive was recovered and my data is now safely backed up on another drive.

Many, many thanks for the help.

Cheers,

Bob

Good :), yet another happy bunny in the basket!

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/128727-cant-access-repair-my-pc-option-via-f8-startup/?p=828512

 

jaclaz

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hello,

 

I am using a modified DKU-5 cable with correctly marked RX,TX and GND pins. I have used this cable earlier for my hard disk recoveries for seagate ST31000xxxAS 7200.11 (1TB).

 

The disk is now showing the same behavior of having clicking noise immediately after power up. The heads move to the platters and park back. I guess this is the famous BSY error.

 

I have performed recoveries of the similar sort with the same cable, but somehow this time it is not working. I have carefully followed all the steps mentioned in different guides everywhere and especially on this forum.

 

1. I am covering the motor head contacts (3 pins) with card stack paper.

2. I have checked the DKU-5 cable drivers on Windows XP (USB to UART).

3. The hyperterminal connection starts with the connection rate baud settings.

4. Any characters typed in the hyperterminal window do not appear , unless i connect the Rx ad Tx wires which ensures working connection and loopback test.

5. When i connect the cable to the correct pins on the harddisk, the loopback does not work, in a power down state, which means that the cables pins are not touching each other.

6. Whenever I power on the drive (using an external sata disk enclosure by Sarotech), the disk powers on and stays quite because i have isolated the motor contacts.

7. However after waiting for around 10-15 sec when I open the hyperterminal session and send the Ctrl+Z command , I always see a right hand side arrow symbol being show in the window. It is the symbol for ctrl+z (which means undo I guess). Hence the actual F3T/> prompt never comes.

8. If i power off the drive, then I cannot see the right arrow symbol.

9. Based on this behavior I feel that the maybe the PCB is shorted, since when power up , it only connects the cable Tx and Rx pins.

10. Finding an exact replacement PCB is a herculean task, plus I assume that it simply does not work by swapping the PCB.,

11. I dont have and cannot afford expensive recovery services. I only have once service provider in sight, who has the Atola or PC-3000 appratus for recoveries. Is it possible to extract data from such a driver using the PC-3000.

12. Is it possible to try it out with another cable and power supply, maybe the power supplied to the PCB isnt enough, although on visual inspection it does not look fried or having any over voltage damages done to it.

 

 

Am i correct in my diagnosis , any further ray of hope and guidance would be highly thanked for.

 

Thanks.

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...

 

The disk is now showing the same behavior of having clicking noise immediately after power up. The heads move to the platters and park back. I guess this is the famous BSY error.

...

Am i correct in my diagnosis , any further ray of hope and guidance would be highly thanked for.

.

 

No, a BSY is simply a busy status.

 

If the drive clicks it is not a "pure" BSY it is the commonly called "click of death".

 

Typically when powered the disk drive will click 10, 11 or 12 times and then spin down.

See a few posts starting from here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/128807-the-solution-for-seagate-720011-hdds/?p=1062178

and this (only three posts above yours):

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/128807-the-solution-for-seagate-720011-hdds/page-189#entry1082429

Unfortunately if this is the case, there is no known/ready DIY way out :(.

 

 

10. Finding an exact replacement PCB is a herculean task, plus I assume that it simply does not work by swapping the PCB.,

No need to assume :no::

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/150215-dont-even-think-of-swapping-pcbs-on-720011/

finding a suitable PCB is fairly easy, for the record, and even the ROM swapping - though not easy-peasy - is something that is achievable by an "advanced/experienced" DIY guy or by a TV/Radio/Phone repairman, it is just the matter of desoldering and re-soldering a (tiny) component properly.

But the fact is that IF it is a "click of death case" the PCB has no issues whilst Head(s)/Preamp or actual platters may have them.

 

jaclaz

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