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The Solution for Seagate 7200.11 HDDs


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Sorry if this has been asked/answered before, many pages in this topic!

I suspect I have the busy error on my seagate. What would happen if an identical electronics board (from unaffected drive) was placed on my problem drive?

Also - I have three partitions on drive, one active, two data. Will the proceedure do anything to existing partitions/data?

Thank you

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Sorry if this has been asked/answered before, many pages in this topic!

[sarcasm]

This HAS been asked before, and the answer has been all the times:

Why do you think people found this difficult method if simply exchanging the boards would work?

It has been also put into music by Bob Dylan:

How many drives must a man pay for before he gets an identical board......

[/sarcasm]

I suspect I have the busy error on my seagate. What would happen if an identical electronics board (from unaffected drive) was placed on my problem drive?

[serious]

You would have TWO not working drives, and it is even possible that when you return the board borrowed to the drive where it was, you will still have TWO not working drives. :ph34r:

DO NOT do it!

[/serious]

Also - I have three partitions on drive, one active, two data. Will the proceedure do anything to existing partitions/data?

[sarcasm]

It depends, this method does not do anything to existing partitions, as long as they were originally formatted in a month without the "r" in it's name (it's urdu name of course) and that were NOT partitioned with full moon.

[/sarcasm]

:whistle:

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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I suspect I have the busy error on my seagate. What would happen if an identical electronics board (from unaffected drive) was placed on my problem drive?

[serious]

You would have TWO not working drives, and it is even possible that when you return the board borrowed to the drive where it was, you will still have TWO not working drives. :ph34r:

DO NOT do it!

[/serious]

Indeed. The faulty data that causes the BSY error is stored inside the disk (read the explanation in the original post for more info), and simply replacing the PCB with the controller will not fix it.

This solution requires you to invest a few $ in equipment, but it's not that hard to pull off, and in my personal opinion it's well worth the satisfaction of fixing something yourself, not to mention getting all your data back. :)

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I suspect I have the busy error on my seagate. What would happen if an identical electronics board (from unaffected drive) was placed on my problem drive?

[serious]

You would have TWO not working drives, and it is even possible that when you return the board borrowed to the drive where it was, you will still have TWO not working drives. :ph34r:

DO NOT do it!

[/serious]

Indeed. The faulty data that causes the BSY error is stored inside the disk (read the explanation in the original post for more info), and simply replacing the PCB with the controller will not fix it.

This solution requires you to invest a few $ in equipment, but it's not that hard to pull off, and in my personal opinion it's well worth the satisfaction of fixing something yourself, not to mention getting all your data back. :)

You're assuming that buying the equipment and following the instructions works

it hasnt for me.

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You're assuming that buying the equipment and following the instructions works

it hasnt for me.

NO, he is saying that IF the problem is one of the two detailed and IF the APPROPRIATE equipment has been used following PROPERLY the instructions, it has worked in a few THOUSANDS of cases.

Swapping boards CANNOT work, unless a far more difficult procedure is used (involving soldering and desoldering on the board) AND the boards are really identical.

You:

I bought a ca-42 cable off amazon, followed this guide

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29FztWJVxbM

no dice

no response after ctrl+z

the casing for the usb plug of my cable wasn't plastic it was rubber molded over a pcb encased in glue, which i had to cut off to read the port plugs.

connecting the tx to the rx cable produces no echo in hyperterminal either

i used the drivers that came with the device

should I use another one?

still trying to figure this out :realmad:

don't really want to spend money on another cable

basically:

  • bought a cable that is not the "best" advised solution, and possibly is also one of the NO GOOD ones
  • either managed to break it or the thingy was DOA: "connecting the tx to the rx cable produces no echo in hyperterminal either"
  • don't want to buy another cable

This does not count as a report of the unbricking not working, as you have a DEAD cable/not working equipment.

jaclaz

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hi all

i have a 0mb drive after changing the pcb of the drive

so i tried to do the 0 lba method and i have this error

F3 T>m0,2,2,0,0,0,0,22

Error 1008 DETSEC 0000500E Process Defect List Error

R/W Sense 00000002, R/W Error 841C0087, List Offset 00000000, File Error 00000001

does anybody knows what to do ?

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You're assuming that buying the equipment and following the instructions works

it hasnt for me.

NO, he is saying that IF the problem is one of the two detailed and IF the APPROPRIATE equipment has been used following PROPERLY the instructions, it has worked in a few THOUSANDS of cases.

Swapping boards CANNOT work, unless a far more difficult procedure is used (involving soldering and desoldering on the board) AND the boards are really identical.

You:

I bought a ca-42 cable off amazon, followed this guide

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29FztWJVxbM

no dice

no response after ctrl+z

the casing for the usb plug of my cable wasn't plastic it was rubber molded over a pcb encased in glue, which i had to cut off to read the port plugs.

connecting the tx to the rx cable produces no echo in hyperterminal either

i used the drivers that came with the device

should I use another one?

still trying to figure this out :realmad:

don't really want to spend money on another cable

basically:

  • bought a cable that is not the "best" advised solution, and possibly is also one of the NO GOOD ones
  • either managed to break it or the thingy was DOA: "connecting the tx to the rx cable produces no echo in hyperterminal either"
  • don't want to buy another cable

This does not count as a report of the unbricking not working, as you have a DEAD cable/not working equipment.

jaclaz

Well broski, reccomend me a proper cable then. I've already looked through nearly every page in the thread, I didn't see anyone reccomending anything but the ca-42

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Well broski, reccomend me a proper cable then. I've already looked through nearly every page in the thread, I didn't see anyone reccomending anything but the ca-42

You could always make your own using a RS232<->TTL converter, as described in the first post. It's really not hard to do.

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Well broski, reccomend me a proper cable then. I've already looked through nearly every page in the thread, I didn't see anyone reccomending anything but the ca-42

Were you blindfolded when looking? :unsure:

To re-cap:

  • the HD accepts TTL level signals
  • a USB-to-TTL or a RS232-to-TTL or a USB-to-RS232 AND a RS232-to-TLL interface is what is needed
  • there are commercially available (or it is remarkably simple to autobuild) such interfaces, this thread is FULL of links to various models

Most cellular phones, including Nokia ones, are also programmed through a TTL level interface.

Thus, if you ALREADY have one of those cellular phone cables around and you don't use it anymore, it costs you nothing to see if it works.

Buying a new one is NOT advised because:

  • you have to open it and while doing so there is a probability you will break it
  • there are several types of these cables some work, some DO NOT, some have NOT the "right" drivers, and when you buy one of them there is no practical way to know if it's the "good" type
  • besides, some of these cables get their power from the USB port, whilst some get it (if I may one of the stoopidest ideas I've ever seen in my life :w00t:) from the actual phone battery, so you have to connect an additional battery to replace the power normally drawn from the phone

There are SEVERAL posts in this thread about this issue, most notably an illustrated one here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/solution-seagate...-page-1756.html

More generally, the various tutorial are to be used as a cooking recipe should be:

  • if you are a professional cook, or you have some experience in the field, you can use the recipe as a base and change doses and ingredients and vary cooking time, result will probably be edible.
  • if you are not expert at this, you should not change anything and do exactly as it is written in the recipe you chose.

This said there are as well SEVERAL reports of success using various original and non-original CA-42, a couple examples:

http://www.msfn.org/board/solution-seagate...-page-1805.html

http://www.msfn.org/board/solution-seagate...-page-1833.html

Common point is that due (generally speaking :)) to the lack of experience of users, when there is a report of failure it is sometime difficult to say whether a given cable is the problem or it is the way the user connected it (or failed to connect it) or whatever.

jaclaz

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Hello!

I created this account just to say: THANK YOU. I had the BSY error and following the instructions here (and other places around the 'net) I managed to save it.

I also wanted to give a rundown of what I ended up doing, in the event that it might help somebody out there.

I have a Maxtor Diamondback 22, firmware MX-15, hooked up to an Asus P5Q-E mobo. A week ago, when I started the computer, it would hang for ~30sec before even going to the BIOS splash screen; hang there for another ~30sec longer than normal; then finally get around to telling me that it couldn't find an OS. Going into BIOS setup revealed no drives detected on the SATA bus.

I had a hell of a time trying to find the RS232-TTL connection. After scrounging all the local electronics stores and coming up empty, what I ended up doing was going to the shady stores that promise to unlock your cellphone. One of them had a DKU-5 cable that I bought for 10€. I chopped the cable in half and stripped it to find that it only had 3 wires in the middle - red, blue, and orange. WTF!? Probably some crappy offshoot from Hong Kong. Long story short, the lesson I learned was:

- I didn't need to saw apart the USB end of the cable (I did, but it didn't help much, since the labels were numbers and I couldn't find a schematic online)

- it turned out that the orange was ground, Red=Rx, Blue=Tx

- TEST! I plugged it in, fired up the terminal, and go no echo...then touched the red and blue together...got echo...whee!

I found out on a French forum that the DKU-5 and CA-42 are very similar (the previous is perhaps USB1? but it got the job done). But DON'T buy the DKE-2, or the other CA- cable, because they're basically just USB extension cords (the end of the cables look roughly the same for the ones that work, and not at all like the ones that don't). I would assume that you could do this with other cellphones, as I'm sure Nokia isn't the only company out there to do this, but it's up to you to hit Google and figure out what will work.

While I'm on the terminal, I'll mention that (yes I know this is a M$ forum) I'm a linux user (one of the OSs that doesn't even exist when this forum asks you which one you use). Since I only have one HD on this machine (soon to change!), I booted up with an Ubuntu live CD (that alone is 100x more useful than any windoze CD I've ever had) and installed minicom (sudo apt-get install minicom). After plugging in the DKU5, typing "dmesg" informed me that it recognized the cable and connected it to /dev/ttyUSB0. "minicom -s" to configure, and I was good to go.

Taking off the PCB and sticking a folded sheet of paper over the motor contact was straightforward enough. I hot-plugged the drive (scary! but unf. a necessary evil, as I don't have a better way to switch its power on-off) and followed the instructions on the terminal. When you get to the part where you slide the paper out, you need to put the screw back in - that's the part that makes the magic contact.

Once you get it running, just go to www.maxtor.com (or seagate) and find the firmware update - it's easy enough to locate. For me, it was MX1A. Hopefully by now they've worked out the kinks and I won't be using this drive to build any houses...

All told, I did it with 10€, a torx T6, some rudimentary tools to strip the wires, electrical tape, and a handy linux live CD. No need to even use a second computer.

Again, thanks to all the people out there who have posted in various forums with info/advice on how to do this. Also check out the video sites, as there's several videos illustrating what to do.

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Hi everyone, I have precisely the same error message as OliKel. I successfully ressurected two seagates and perhaps from overconfidence became a little reckless with the third. Apparently I fried my controller with the process (no spinup). I found an identical hard drive (site code, fw, date code very close) thinking I could simply swap the controller and perhaps repeat the procedure. No luck, apparently there is drive specific info on the pcb rom. All is well until last step, instead of repartitioning I get

error message "DiagError 0000500E Process Defect List Error

R/W Sense 00000002, R/W Error 841C0087, List Offset 00000000, File Error 0000000

1". Drive spins up normally with very slight clicking that disappears after a few seconds. Could any of you learned gentlemen tell me what my options are now? Would it be feasible to take my boards somewhere and have the rom chip swapped? I am still optimistic that my very important data is sitting there undisturbed but inaccessible. I cant afford thousands of dollars in professional file recovery costs. Should I perhaps try again to find identical drive or am I barking up the wrong tree" Thanks all

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Hi guys,

long time no see. :D

I have something strange to report. Some time ago I had tried to resurrect my ST31000333AS SD15, but unfortunately wasn't successful. I gave up on the drive, stored it in the closet and pretty much forgot about it.

Today I decided to give it another try and to my surprise it now is detected in BIOS again, but pretends to have FW, version "ZZ7L", whích is 100% wrong. That means essentially I could flash the drive, but due to the firmware check at the beginning of the flash procedure, it just stops there with an error stating "NO MATCH" although it is definitely the right drive.

It now is detected by BIOS as ST31000333AS, which is correct, but as having a capacity of 0MB. :)

And I can't get the command to fix this problem (m0,2,2,,,,,22) to work. It just hangs in hyperterminal. Perhaps this has something to do with reporting the wrong firmware in some way.

Anyway, I now contacted Seagate. Who knows, maybe they are actually willing to help. ;)

Update:

SUCCESS!!!

I got my 1TB drive back. After it was recognized by BIOS now I could finally issue the m0,2,2,,,,,22 command on another machine and it actually worked. It took ages (~35 minutes!) to finish, but it worked. Flashed the firmware right away and everything seems OK.

Edited by MadOCer
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