The Solution for Seagate 7200.11 HDDs

[eli2k]

Hey guys, is this the correct way to wire everything up? My questions are 1) am I grounding the GND pin from the hard drive properly (is the GND right next to the TX on the hard drive?)? I am going to hook up the SATA power source directly to the drive, and I don't want to stick a ground into there. Someone mentioned that after they connected the SATA power cable, their 3V battery exploded, so I want to be sure this is correct. Are both power sources necessary? It sounds like if I use just the 3V it is enough. If I use just the SATA, then I have to ground it somehow (not sure how). And 2) have I placed the cards in the correct place, to block the motor? I heard there were two areas, the motor and some other part, and both should be blocked off. On the 500gb model I have, there's this little foam cushion thing. I can stick something at the motor (center part), but on the other contact, it becomes difficult, so I'm not sure how to approach this.

Thanks,

- Eli

Edited February 14, 2009 by eli2k

[blackbut]

Hi guys, I have a Dell OEM 7200.11 750G drive and it went undetected. I am following the procedure to reset the hard drive. After I entered U to spin up, it is stuck at the command and doesn't go back to F3 2> even for a long time. Then I pressed enter, it give me the F3 T>, and I went to level 2 to spin up again, it says spin up complete elapsed time 0.000 secs. So I went on executed N1, then m0,2,2,0,0,0,0,22. The last command didn't go back to F3 T> as well for 10 mins or so. I powered off and installed to my computer, it is now detected by BIOS but capacity is unknown. What should I do now? Any help will be appreciated! Thanks in advance!

Have you unmounted the PCB?

Yes I isolated PCB before powering on and remove the paper after Z. then U. Anyway it seems partially work even I didn't see the success message.

I have redone the whole procedure again. Now BIOS is showing correct capacity. But shortly after windows starts, it gives me blue screen and reboot to a menu and let me choose to boot to repair mode, then windows did some test and says fixed, but next reboot still fails. I guess there may be some bad sectors causing windows not be able to load. I'm using seatools to check the disk now.

Anyway I believe some data may be corrupted but some data should be accessible now. I'll get a sata cable to install to my computer to copy over data.

At least this is a big step forward. Big thanks to all of you for all advice on this thread!

I think paper method is a bad method (sometimes it has a lot of problems).

Unmount the PCB, clean the contacts (motor and heads and PCB contacts too) and mount the PCB tightening the screws for make good contact.

I plugged the hard drive to my computer and all the data are readable. Now I have copied all data and am going to return it to Dell. I want to thank you guys who wrote all the helpful comments!

[Runapa]

Hello All.

I have some problem with my hdd. I conect tx and rx on my st31000340as and the terminal send me cc error. But when i disconect hdd and isolete motors terminal after pressing ctrl+z send me this: LED:000000CE FAddr:0028E24B.

What me do ?

ps: Sorry for my bad english.

[eli2k]

First board I had from alldav did not work (couldn't do the loopback test so couldn't do anything with it), so I had to pick up the Schmartboard here: http://shop2.frys.com/product/4717389 - hooked it up with 3V cell battery, and disconnected just the motor (the middle connector), and it seems to have worked.

[ruizt]

(Sorry for my English)

Hello, many hours ago I started to repair my HD SEAGATE ST31000340AS with SD15 (1 TB. / 75% occupied) that suffered both problems (BSY and LBA 0 error).

Finally It has been a success.

For this I used the dock station DSS-20 (similar to the DSS-25) for Sony-Ericsson T610's family.

Has been complicated because the connection Hyperterminal not working well, Hyperterminal showing me strange characters and symbols.

Found PINS RX and TX and connect with SonyEricsson interface was hardly , I had to do extensive testing to ensure that the quality of the connection could lead to the solution.

Thank you very much GRADIUS2 and colleagues in the forum for all information.

If I can help someone can send me an email to ruizt@ono.com (better in Spanish).

I will not buy more HDs Seagate, it is either a bug, but its management of the solution and the chaos and secrecy they have created do not deserve my approval.

PD: Next I updated my BIOS with last version "MooseDT-SD1A-3D4D-16-32MB", works fine with my HD.

Thanks for all!!!!!!

[chris2009]

I'm from Romania and i can't find the RS323 to TTL/CMOS adapter here to buy.Is another device that can replace the RS323 to TTL/CMOS adapter (like mobilephones cables or pc adapters) in that circuit to unbrick my seagate hard drive? It have the problem to not be recognized by the bios.

If you have any solutions, can someone help me with some images with other adapter that would work and how to put them in that circuit. I'm not an expert in electronics .

Thanks in advance.

[Otake]

Hi all,

I am another victim of this firmware issue! It seems getting all the parts and trying to unlock the drive will be too much effort and frustration for me. Is there anyone who will help me to unlock my drive? If you live in London; I can happily drive to your home; if you dont then I can post my drive to you. I mean instead of everyone trying to get all the parts and fix this by themselves; we can help each other here. Of course I will pay to anyone who is willing to do this for me since I wont be paying for any parts or spending my time for it.

I probably dont have any important data in the drive since I got a few backups in the past or it wont be that much important to loose them. I just want to save the drive and the time I will be spending to install all those programs again. So dont be afraid to take risk here; I wont blame you if anything goes wrong with my drive.

[bp2411]

Hi all,

I am another victim of this firmware issue! It seems getting all the parts and trying to unlock the drive will be too much effort and frustration for me. Is there anyone who will help me to unlock my drive? If you live in London; I can happily drive to your home; if you dont then I can post my drive to you. I mean instead of everyone trying to get all the parts and fix this by themselves; we can help each other here. Of course I will pay to anyone who is willing to do this for me since I wont be paying for any parts or spending my time for it.

I probably dont have any important data in the drive since I got a few backups in the past or it wont be that much important to loose them. I just want to save the drive and the time I will be spending to install all those programs again. So dont be afraid to take risk here; I wont blame you if anything goes wrong with my drive.

Hello mate, im from Cardiff and I fixed mine using a Nokia 3210 data cable bought from ebay for about £3 delivered this is going to be cheaper than posting your drive to someone and them then posting it back to you. If you would like to give it a go yourself feel free to pm me any questions you have. If you are not sure about doing it yourself I would be willing to do it if you post your drive to me but tbh would only do this if no one closer to you can fix it for you as I no how unreliable royal mail are.

PM me if you like

[Gradius2]

Well, I have some bad and "good" news from Seagate.

"Good" one first: They released a new firmware (yes, AGAIN!) dated from 27/01/2009 @ 8:17am (but released only in 29/01/2009 at best).

BAD one is: If they did that, is probably for a good reason (?), what isn't fair (for us) it was labeled as SD1A (yes, again), but they're different. Probably they labeled as same old SD1A to not showing for everyone they slipped with the code again (sigh).

Old flasher: FDL462b.EXE (v4.62b)

NEW flasher: fdl464.exe (v4.64)

Firmwares (SD1A3D4D.LOD):

OLD: b07e3a9ccf49185bc681f858c6ce568b45dd0ae5
NEW: d7877432f3d4827a39857b30d793df4081342d1d

Direct link for firmwares:

http://support.seagate.com/firmware/firmnav_en.html

I checked SD1A only, no idea on others.

This is for:

ST3750330AS, ST3750630AS, ST31000340AS running AD14, SD15, SD16, SD17, SD18, SD19 or SD81 firmwares.

[Gradius2]

Flashed with "new" SD1A no apparent changes so far.

[htpc]

If I have already updated to the old SD1A firmware will it allow me to update to the new SD1A firmware?

[Gradius2]

If I have already updated to the old SD1A firmware will it allow me to update to the new SD1A firmware?

Probably, but I'm not 100% sure.

All I got was "sending binary to the drive" or something like that.

[PrOfiLer]

Hellow my friends, finally solved my problem, and below i will explain how to i solved the problem step by step.

First, thanks all users of this forum to contribute every day to help us all to this big problem of the Seagate discs that neither the technical nor Seagate wanted to help us more. Thank you all now. Thanks to spellcasterbr across personal assistance, Thanks Gradius2 to the great topic and all the help to all us, Thanks to aviko to the careful and correct the code for the better.

I hope this forum, this topic and this post help all victims of this serious problem.

I have a Seagate Barracuda ST3500320AS.

I bought a nokia original CA-42 cable, i cut the cable, the cable was 5 wires of 5 colors, yellow, blue, white, green, orange.

My cable is CA-42 but in fact more similar to the DKU-5 internally.

http://buffalo.nas-central.org/index.php/U...RM9_Linkstation

The TX is the white cable and the RX is the green cable.

The cable I bought did not have drivers then the drivers found here:

http://www.planete-nokia.com/phpBB2/lofive...php/t35412.html

I Follow the instructions on how to proceed in the post of Gradius2:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?s=&amp...st&p=828228

But i used the codes of aviko:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?s=&amp...st&p=832794

Followed carefully step by step.

After i recover the hard disk, the first thing i did was update the firmware:

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/self...&NewLang=en

And finally back again my hard disk as if nothing ever had happened.

Thanks to all for the support... and... f*** YOU SEAGATE! WESTERN DIGITAL FOREVER! (in Portuguese: VAI-TE FUDER SEAGATE!)

Edited February 16, 2009 by PrOfiLer

[poolcarpet]

I'm so happy I learnt a new language here!!

VAI-TE FUDER SEAGATE!

VAI-TE FUDER SEAGATE!

VAI-TE FUDER SEAGATE!

Hellow my friends, finally solved my problem, and below i will explain how to i solved the problem step by step.

First, thanks all users of this forum to contribute every day to help us all to this big problem of the Seagate discs that neither the technical nor Seagate wanted to help us more. Thank you all now. Thanks to spellcasterbr across personal assistance, Thanks Gradius2 to the great topic and all the help to all us, Thanks to aviko to the careful and correct the code for the better.

I hope this forum, this topic and this post help all victims of this serious problem.

I have a Seagate Barracuda ST3500320AS.

I bought a nokia original CA-42 cable, i cut the cable, the cable was 5 wires of 5 colors, yellow, blue, white, green, orange.

My cable is CA-42 but in fact more similar to the DKU-5 internally.

http://buffalo.nas-central.org/index.php/U...RM9_Linkstation

The TX is the white cable and the RX is the green cable.

The cable I bought did not have drivers then the drivers found here:

http://www.planete-nokia.com/phpBB2/lofive...php/t35412.html

I Follow the instructions on how to proceed in the post of Gradius2:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?s=&amp...st&p=828228

But i used the codes of aviko:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?s=&amp...st&p=832794

Followed carefully step by step.

After i recover the hard disk, the first thing i did was update the firmware:

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/self...&NewLang=en

And finally back again my hard disk as if nothing ever had happened.

Thanks to all for the support... and... f*** YOU SEAGATE! WESTERN DIGITAL FOREVER! (in Portuguese: VAI-TE FUDER SEAGATE!)

[ctblack]

I have successfully unbricked my drive using Gradius2's instructions! Thank you very much Gradius!! A few things I found that might already been encountered by others, as I didnt read all of the postings (39 pages and still growing!!). I just wanted to share them as they might be helpfull:

1. I started the procedure using the PC's power supply (+5V) to power the convertor and found it does not work! I needed to use 2 'D' cells batteries in series to provide the 3V power to the convertor inorder for the convertor to be able to convert the hard drive's data to RS-232 back to the PC.

2. I keep getting the "LED:000000CE FAddr:00280569" error after I issue the level 2 'Z' spin down command. After checking my connections many times and retried many times. I then used a level 3 'Z' spin down command and it woked!

3. I did'nt have any of the those hard drive pin connectors to the TX/RX/GND pins, so I used some very fine wire to solder to them, got the terminal session working, but all my lower case characters sending to the hard drive would end up corrupted returning as extened ascii characters. I then used the 'B9600' command to change my connection speed to 9600 baud (since the command is in upper case), and everything else worked from that point on.

Edited February 16, 2009 by ctblack