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The Solution for Seagate 7200.11 HDDs


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Hi, so i try what Jaclaz tell me and this is what happen...

When I try to boot from my normal HD with the seagate as a slave windows simply never boot! it freeze when appears the window logo but i notice that the seagate HD makes a tiny little sound every 3-4 seconds or more so i think the HD its not good yet :(

The info in the bios about the HD is this one:

ST3500320AS

LRG, ATA100, 500GB

Cylinder 65535

Head 16

Precomp 0

Landind Zone 65534

Sector 255

And thats it... hope i can fix this with your help guys

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Yep, and should be fine for power - the USB supplies 3.3/5v.

I'm assuming all the cables are coded using the same colors as the others. But I'm not hooking anything up yet until I get a definite answer from the person who recommended this cable to me

Edit:

Oh that was beautiful. I just pulled the little black tab backwards and the cable slid right off, thanks! I'm in need of some electrical tape now, or I could split the connector in three and then re-insert the appropriate contacts.

Now just gotta make sure that the cables are color-coded the same.

Editing edit: Crap, well, the connector's far too thick. Will have to get electrical tape.

Anyone know if any old tape will work for this? or must it be -absolutely- electrical

Editing the edited edit:

Found electrical tape and the mechanical details. Apparently orange and yellow = TXD and RXD. Anyone know if those are synonymous with the TX/RX in Gradius' guide?

valkyrio,

Glad to see it worked. I would much rather use this way.

I have a question for you on this cable: http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch...ame=768-1015-ND.

In that post above you said that "and should be fine for power - the USB supplies 3.3/5V."

Were you talking about power for the cable itself from the computer USB port or is that power for something else?

As far I can tell by your methods all you need is TX,RX,GRD wire from this cable and then Sata power cord to power hard drive. Is this correct?

Thanks,

Mcq360

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To Luyz

Have you tried to boot from a live Linux cd?

It is possible to boot Ubunut and Knoppix with a live cd, making your computer to

start in Linux instead. It will get you a opportunity to saftey copy your data.

Download it from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download and burn it on a cd.

Change your bootup sequence if neccesary and boot from the cd.

Select "Try Ubuntu without any changes on my computer" option.

Maybe jaclaz has a better solution. I would have tried this..

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Yes MCQ, as Kling pointed out, you only use the TXD/RXD/GND cables. The power you will get from your computer's power supply. I'll write out a more specific description of what I did, later today

Also: if you're in the east coast, I would strongly suggest ordering from Adafruit Industries. They packaged the item half an hour after I got my order - and because they're in NY and I'm in MD, I got it the next day (and I paid for the cheapest shipping too.)

Edited by valkyrio
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Yes MCQ, as Kling pointed out, you only use the TXD/RXD/GND cables. The power you will get from your computer's power supply. I'll write out a more specific description of what I did, later today

Also: if you're in the east coast, I would strongly suggest ordering from Adafruit Industries. They packaged the item half an hour after I got my order - and because they're in NY and I'm in MD, I got it the next day (and I paid for the cheapest shipping too.)

That would be great since most of these guides deal with the RS232-to-TTL Serial Adapter.

Thanks

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OK... having finally got my drive spinning up properly again (little bit of stiction it seems)... I ran through the procedure again and success.... well nearly :rolleyes:

Now recognised correctly by the BIOS, I hooked it up as a slave and powered up. I've been using Win2K on an old 20GB HDD in the short-term, which came up fine but recognised the drive as only 128GB "Healthy" with a 128GB partition but unformatted (it's a 500GB drive). So I set the EnableLargeLba registry flag and rebooted. Again the BIOS sees it fine, but Win2K does not see the drive at all. So removed the reg key and rebooted... and Win2K still does not see the drive at all now.

So in slight despair I hooked up the drive as the only drive (it should be bootable)... the BIOS sees it, POST passes fine then I just get a black screen with a white cursor in the top left.

Is it time to get a liveCD version of TestDisk and see what that makes of it?

edit - update Sooo.. I grabbed the Frenzy ISO, burnt it and booted up from that. The boot up sequence messages are very informative... basically the drive is not responding in a timely manner to transfer mode, read cache and write cache parameter requests so it gets ignored in the end. Needless to say TestDisk could not see the drive. Next step is to redo the whole sequence again to reset things (as that is what made the drive appear to W2K for 1 boot) and boot straight to Frenzy and try to use TestDisk. Fingers crossed but I'm not hopeful - still I'm learning some stuff along the way :D

Edited by mrlondon
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K, bit of a quick write up but more descriptive than the last one.

In order to get my drives running again (from the BSY error) I did the following.

Obtained a USB to TTL cable. I got the TTL - 232R-3V3. I believe there's also a 5V version.

Also, a torx 6 screw driver (labeled as T6 when I bought it.)

You will need access to a SATA power cable (wish I knew this before I started, since it meant moving everything and almost damaging one of my drives while moving my tower onto my desk and in a proper place to get the SATA power cable out.)

First thing I did was loosen the screw directly above the motor contacts. You do NOT have to take off the whole PCB board. I would suggest against it. I loosened the screw and inserted a piece of thin card board to interrupt contact between the circuit board and the motor contacts. I practiced a lot, making sure that the contacts were not touching. To insert the paper I loosened a couple of other screws, but once I was sure the contacts weren't touching I tightened all of them except for the one directly above the contacts. I left this one a little lose, so that when I took out the paper it would come out a little easier.

Next I prepared the cable - I took all of the contacts out of the connector (by pulling back the little black tab that is directly below the exposed part of the contacts in the connector) and then proceeded to insulate all of them.

Once that was done, I hooked up the appropriate ones to the HD. In my case, orange was RXD, yellow was TXD, and black was GND. Since you have to connect the PC TXD to the drive's RXD, I connected the orange to the pin on the right (with the PCB facing up) the yellow to the one immediately left of it, and the GND to the second pin from the left. (The first pin from the left is not used at all.) Make sure your contacts are properly insulated with electrical tapes so you don't risk frying anything.

Next I connected the SATA power cable to the drive. Then I connected the USB to the computer. It'll come up as a new device, and you have to install the drivers for it. The ones you'll want to use are the VCP (Virtual COM Port) drivers. For the FTDI 232 cables, the drivers are here: http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm It's the very first one on the list. The device is labeled as FT232R. I believe it'll show up as a Serial Bus Converter or something along those lines in your Ports section of the Device Manager (to go there, right click on My Computer, then Properties, then click on the Hardware tab and click Device Manager.)

Note what COM number the device is installed as. For me it showed Serial Bus (COM3).

From there on out, I followed the Gradius/Carter in Canada guides. The Carter guide is far easier to read, IMO. http://www.mapleleafmountain.com/seagatebrick.html I think it's been linked here before.

I connected in the hyperterminal using the COM number listed under the Device Manager.

The first time around I didn't get a response, but I both restarted and switched the RXD and TXD cables, after that it worked perfectly. I suggest doing one of these, and then the other if you don't get a response either.

I didn't run into any problems, so I can't give any more preemptive advice. Just make sure you're careful after every step, and triple check the commands you input. Also, make sure you have the contacts properly in place as well as properly insulated. I weighed down my TTL cable to make sure the contacts wouldn't slip off.

Anyways, yeah, prolly add some pictures sometime later on and host it somewhere else.

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To Luyz

Have you tried to boot from a live Linux cd?

It is possible to boot Ubunut and Knoppix with a live cd, making your computer to

start in Linux instead. It will get you a opportunity to saftey copy your data.

Download it from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download and burn it on a cd.

Change your bootup sequence if neccesary and boot from the cd.

Select "Try Ubuntu without any changes on my computer" option.

Maybe jaclaz has a better solution. I would have tried this..

Hi KlingKlang, thanks for the idea, i downloaded the ubuntu cd and tried what you tell me with any good luck, ubuntu never find the HD so im hoping that somebody knows whats wrong with this one or if i did wrong all the procedure to fix it, thanks.

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Hi KlingKlang, thanks for the idea, i downloaded the ubuntu cd and tried what you tell me with any good luck, ubuntu never find the HD so im hoping that somebody knows whats wrong with this one or if i did wrong all the procedure to fix it, thanks.

From what you report, you simply were NOT successful in unbricking the drive.

Maybe you are not anymore in the LBA0 issue, but still in the BSY one, or you are in yet another "unworking" state.

What was is the difficult part in this?: :unsure:

http://www.msfn.org/board/solution-seagate...-page-1918.html

If it doesn't, it means that the fix wasn't applied properly, simply did not work, or the drive suffers from ANOTHER problem (not the BSY, not the LBA0), and in any case you should try again to fix it.

jaclaz

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Hi All !

After having read this entire subject, I still have a problem before proceeding with this fix ..

I have everything ready (I hope) : the bricked Seagate, the T6 screw driver, one laptop with XP & HyperTerminal, another PC with power supply for the HDD; the business card, the CA-42 cable recognized by Windows (XP, 7 and vista) as USB/Serial adapter then “Prolific” driver was installed (was recognized as port COMX) and an audio card cable to link 3 wires of the CA42 to the HDD.

My problem is the CA42 wiring … I know this was covered many times, but I have nothing like described in what I've read here (I’ve tried the “touching wires” sequence with HyperTerminal) but I still can’t figure out. I do not have 3 or 5 wires but 4 (red, green, black and white + shield around them) ! I then decided to open the USB end and see the labels on the IC for each wire… unfortunately there is no label (TX, RX etc …)

My first question: according to the picture can someone tell me which wire is which? On the top picture, from top to bottom: red, green, black and white (unsoldered when I tried to open up the white plastic molding around the IC) and on the lower picture the shielding was soldered on this side but once again I messed up when removing the white plastic molding around the IC

post-260478-1253871188_thumb.jpg

Second question (at this stage …) : although the white wire and the shield are disconnected, the cable is still recognized as the USB/serial by any version of Windows, does it mean that the 3 remaining connected wires are the right ones ? Do I need to re-solder the 2 connections (white + shield) ?

Excuse me for my ignorance ....

Many thanks in advance

JP

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Check my post 1834 @ page 92.

That pinout is for the genuine CA-42 cable but since all CA-42 cables got the same connector, genuine or generic, the pinout

would work on your cable to. If you have a multimeter, use that to find which pin that is connected to

which cable.

Edit:The white cable needs to be soldered into place, but you have surely seen that.

Second Edit: The cable is recognized by windows, since this cable probably gets its power from the usb-port.

There is no way to know which cable are the right one. You have to make a pinout-check in order to get it right!

Check the sheild as well, since sometimes it could be a fifth "cable". My guess is what is Ground.

Edited by KlingKlang
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Hey guys - let me share my experiences and highlight my problems (and solutions). Big shout out to the contributors who helped too.

I used a USB to RS232 Module Based TTL PC FTDI FT232BM/BL chip.

So I couldn't seem to get the module to detect in windows. Turns out you need power. I used a USB cable I hacked off and just wrapped the wire around the pin marked VCC. It has to be 5V minimum for this module. 3V didn't work with sata. I repeat.... 3V sata DOES NOT WORK.

I followed the guide on the front page to fix the BSY error. First, I could not get it to spin up when I removed the paper (the one blocking the pins touching). It would take ~30s and error. You need to screw the PCB back onto the HDD... just letting it rest is not enough.... it NEEDS TO BE VERY TIGHT. DO NOT THINK you can forget about screwing it on. This was my biggest mistake, and took me a long time to figure it out.

I hope this helps a few people

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So I couldn't seem to get the module to detect in windows. Turns out you need power. I used a USB cable I hacked off and just wrapped the wire around the pin marked VCC. It has to be 5V minimum for this module. 3V didn't work with sata. I repeat.... 3V sata DOES NOT WORK.

The POWER you supply has NOTHING to do with the TTL levels the interface needs to provide to the sata.

If the chip is the version that needs 5V you need to supply to it 5V.

If the chip is the version that requires 3.3V you may use a 3V new battery, there are reports that a slightly discharged one didn't managed to operate.

Among th e"Maxim" series:

the 3.3V version is usually known as MAX3232:

http://www.maxim-ic.com/quick_view2.cfm/qv_pk/1068

as opposed to the "normal" MAX232:

http://www.maxim-ic.com/quick_view2.cfm/qv_pk/1798

Each version of the chip properly powered will output proper TTL level signals:

http://www.interfacebus.com/voltage_threshold.html

TTL interprets as 0 anything below 0.8 V and as 1 anything above (within limits ;)) 2 V.

The one you used:

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi...em=200384540331

Doesn't hide very well:

003.jpg

the fact that it NEEDS 5V ;)

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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