The Solution for Seagate 7200.11 HDDs

[underwurlde]

So this solution which is on page 1, does it still work or is there a newer better one?

Orignal solution still holds true. Subsequent discussions are people asking specific questions, how they did it and use of different types of serial interface hardware to get the RS232 connection between HDD and PC running HyperTerminal.

How do I know if a have the 0 LBA or BSY error?

I think I have the BSY error because BIOS doens't detect anything right?

I think you have the BSY error too. See cyberguytr's post 2nd post above your post on p116 for very good overview.

I have found the update

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/self...sp?DocId=207951

but I guess it wont work without the drive being detected?

Correct. Need to get drive back BEFORE updating firmware unfortunately!

I live in germany, could Seagate maybe help me here? Or do they not recover any data?

Seagate have recovered drives that display this fault in the past so worth perhaps tracking them down in your country.

GL

Andy

[cybercover]

underwurlde, thank you very much for your answer!

I did not find USB > TTL converter in german shops (for a not very big amount of money)..

I found it here

http://www.adafruit.com/index.php?main_pag...;products_id=70

It would cost around 22 Euros with shipping, that's ok.

Just one question, there is written that it is a 3.3V

********

The version we have is the 3.3V (we used to carry the 5.0V) the only difference is that the 3.3V cable sends data signals at 3.3V levels instead of 5V. It is 5V compliant which means that it can receive 5V signals no problem. The power line still provides 5V. Basically, it works just as good as the 5.0V version, but is better for projects and devices that need 3.3V signals.

********

Is this ok or should I look for a 5V one?

Thank you!

[jaclaz]

@cybercover

The point is that:

IF the drive is under warranty Seagate will EITHER:

1. revive it
   
2. give you a replacement
   

In case #1 they WON'T guarantee that your data will be accessible (the DATA should get accessinble after the Fix, but they won't take any responsibility about this)

In case #2 obviously you WON'T get your data back and since the drive you get back is another refurbished or new one you do not have a chance to recover the data.

Otherwise they will try and recover the data (for a fair-to-expensive amount of money) through their connected Data Recovery firm, I365.

It is entirely up to you, and of course it depends on the value you attribute to your data to:

• ask for recovery to I365
  
• ask for recovery to another firm (usually you can find lower prices), and possibly you can find a recovery firm in your city, avoiding the risk of sending the disk drive back and forth
  
• try doing it yourself
  

As a reference, this guide:

http://www.mapleleafmountain.com/seagatebrick.html

is very clear and complete.

jaclaz

P.S.: the 3.3V is OK

Edited January 19, 2010 by jaclaz

[pedrojpz]

Hello,

I woke up yesterday to find that when I powered up the screen hung blank restarted about 5 times and it would not boot to windows just hang at a blank screen.

I went into BIOS and found that the drive was not even recognized. Did some googling and found a thread on seagate forums that directed me here. So i went out in the afternoon bought a USB data cable with a pl303 inside it and a torx screwdriver, built my cable plugged it in to the HD and powered up the HD from a separate PSU.

The first time I tried communicating through HypTerm I got junk info, powered down tried again, now I was getting prompts as stated in the guide but I was not getting any feedback from HD, for instance I typed Z at prompt and the drive did spin down however it didn't give me a report / summary on how long it took. I did get the prompts as expected however ie changing to level 2 etc. so I got to the part when you have to power down and back up before putting in the main command, but when I powered the drive back up and HypTerm froze after I typed ctrl+Z... I waited 40 mins for something but it was frozen. decide to sleep on it , was 4:30 am...

So I try again today and now I get the first prompt as expected but when I tell it to spin down nothing... and it gives me these random characters... 699928056969 .... not in one go, it would give me one number or a sequence in time intervals...

I'm trying it again now, but if anyone has had similar troubles can you please let me know how you solved it.... The main thing that mystifies me is why I'm not getting any feed back from HD, and these random characters.

Also I should mention that I have a 500GB Maxtor Diamond Max 22

Thanks.

Make sure your USB cable is connected correctly to the HD, it seems that the cable that goes from the TX pin of the HD to the USB adapter is not making a good connection. Sorry for my english.

[jaclaz]

@qwerty

...and check GROUNDing of the drive and interface.

jaclaz

[pedrojpz]

Thanks for your tips...

Just an update...

I checked the connections and all seems fine but still no responses...

So I just continued with the commands and I managed to do the procedure, with the glist clear and now in BIOS it recognises HD but as 0GB ... does this mean that I have to follow the 0LBA procedure?

Also now the HypTerm says unable to open com3 I don't understand why not? If I do a loopback, it works.

Perhaps you should try a different computer to do this.

[pedrojpz]

...but just decided to do it without any responses...

You are so brave!

[jaclaz]

So now the HD boots to windows I copied over most of the files to another drive, but from one partition the files will not copy over at all, it says that the drive is not readable... any ideas?

Here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/can-recover-part...st-t138162.html

You should image the drive, and then start a new thread if you need help in attempting recovery of that parttition or of the data in it.

This app is suitable:

http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/v3/drdd.htm

jaclaz

[the$#!Za.]

Hi all.

I regretfuly have a Seagate Sata 500GB hard drive with the famous for the wrong reason Firmware version SD15, which about 3 weeks ago bricked itself with the BSY state error and have fixed now fully successfully and got all my DATA back. The fvcked thing is out of my other 3 Seagate Sata hard drives, 2 of them are the FAULTY Barracuda 7200.11 series, which really means they are just ticking time bombs. But I'm used to this kind of luck, sad ha ??

Thanks Gradius and Brad Garcia heaps, really really appreciate it.

Guys if you are using the RS232-TTL adapter way to fix your hard drives, and you want a simple guide which is straight to the point with good quality pictures,

and the EXACT text to type which he shows in RED, use Brad Garcia's guide which is here : http://sites.google.com/site/seagatefix/Home

BUT YOU MUST KNOW THAT THERE IS ONLY ONE THING MISSING FROM BRAD GARCIA'S GUIDE (ABOVE LINK), WHICH IS AFTER TYPING THE COMMAND "N1", HE SAYS TO POWER OFF YOUR HARD DRIVE (WHILE YOUR TERMINAL CONNECTION PROGRAM IS STILL RUNNING), WAIT A FEW SECONDS (I WAITED UNTIL I HEARD THE POWER NOISE TURN OFF), THEN PLUG THE POWER BACK INTO THE HARD DRIVE AND WAIT 20 SECONDS THEN DO THE PARTITION REGENERATION COMMAND WHICH IS "m0,2,2,0,0,0,0,22", BUT THIS LAST STEP WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE BECAUSE WHEN YOU TURN THE POWER OFF/ON THE HARD DRIVE AFTER THE "N1" COMMAND, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO TYPE ANYTHING UNLESS YOU PRESS THE "CTRL-z" COMMAND WHICH IS THE IMPORTANT STEP BRAD GARCIA'S GUIDE DOESN'T MENTION. WHEN "CTRL-z" IS PRESSED, YOU SHOULD THEN SEE THE "F3 T>" PROMPT. ONLY THEN THE LAST AND MOST IMPORTANT COMMAND IS POSSIBLE TO BE TYPED IN WHICH IS "m0,2,2,0,0,0,0,22".

By the way, I AM CONFIRMING ONCE AND FOR ALL THE PIN CLOSEST TO THE HARD DRIVE'S DATA PORT IS THE HARD DRIVES "RX" PIN WHICH OFCOURSE MEANS YOU PLUG YOUR RS232-TTL ADAPTER'S "TX" TO IT AND OBVIOUSLY THE PIN NEXT TO IT IS THE HARD DRIVE'S "TX" PIN WHICH OFCOURSE MEANS YOU PLUG YOUR RS232-TTL ADAPTER'S "RX" TO IT. Brad Garcia's guide has the hard drive's "TX" pin labelled as the pin closest to the hard drive's DATA port but it is actually the hard drive's "RX" pin.

As long as you remember the missing "CTRL-z" command in Brad Garcia's guide and remember the hard drive's "RX" pin is the closest pin to the hard drive's DATA port, it's an excellent, simple and easy to follow guide. I didn't know I had to press "CTRL-z" after powering off/on my hard drive and pressed some keys but nothing was showing, so I just closed the Terminal connection, unplugged everything and started again which was successful. Ofcourse if you want more details on maybe some equipment and stuff and other people's experiences, this Gradius guide here is good for that.

Another important thing to note is that I had all the right connections and for 2 weeks I couldn't get the prompt to come up when pressing the first "CTRL-z" command to get started with the "F3 T>" prompt. I done what Gradius's guide said (as I found Gradius's guide before Brad Garcia's guide) which is to plug the "red" wire from my power supply to my RS232-TTL adapter which was giving me 5V. After nearly giving up, I remembered Brad Garcia's guide and how he used the "orange" wire from the power supply as the Sata connectors on the power supply have an orange wire for 3.3V instead of the normal red wire for 5V.

So I just done exactly what he done, I cut off one of my power supply's Sata ports (I couldn't open mine nicely like he did as they're not the same), grabbed the 3.3V orange wire and ofcourse the black wire next to it for Ground and BANG, it just worked. Also no Ground wire from the RS232-TTL adapter to the hard drive is needed unless like the guides say, you're using a battery for your power source.

So for 2 weeks I totally wasted my time, as I was running my RS232-TTL adapter using the power supply's "red" 5V wire, when I should of used the power supply's "orange" 3.3V wire. If you've tried everything and are positive your connections are right but you just can't get the magical "F3 T>" prompt when pressing "CTRL-z", try 3.3V instead of 5V for your RS232-TTL adapter power source.

Also, someone previously said you have to be stupid and to never SWAP the hard drive's PCB (Printed Circuit Board for those who don't know) with another hard drive of ofcourse the exact model, which is true for this BSY error and LBA error BUT this method isn't stupid for all situations as my friend's PCB short circuited on his hard drive, so he got another PCB which was identical to it with ofcourse the same "Revision" number of the fried PCB and it worked flawlessly like as if nothing ever fried, so it's not always stupid, and I myself have recovered DATA from one of my old drives using the freezer trick but only because I knew it was a heating issue causing the drive to fail in the first place, so different methods for different situations. AGAIN, DO NOT swap PCB or put hard drive in freezer if you have the BSY state error or the LBA error as this will do nothing.

I will answer some questions or provide some photos if anyone's curious about something or just not sure and need help. I am using Gradius's RS232-TTL adapter which is this one ; http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_i...products_id=449, Windows Vista x64 Ultimate and used "TeraTerm" for my terminal connection program, everything's in the "Setup" tab at the top if you click on it, and the only 2 things there you will need to use is "Terminal" and "Serial Port". Use the Terminal section if you want to try a Loopback test by clicking on "Local Echo" however this should be turned back off when connecting to the hard drive, and the Serial Port section ofcourse to set your COM port and changing the settings (from top to bottom) to 38400-8-None-1-None and your set. You can also change these settings from your actual Serial/COM port's settings and not just TeraTerm's settings by going into your Windows Device Manager, find your Serial/COM port and go to it's properties and set the speed settings etc to the same as TeraTerm (38400-8-None-1-None). I don't think this is necessary but I done it just to make sure.

And guys if you want some video footage or different ways people are doing it just for curiousity, just type into Google Seagate hard drive fix and click on Videos at the top, there's a few videos of guys doing this Seagate fix.

AGAIN, if you don't want to confuse yourself with all the different ways and are using the RS232-TTL adapter way to fix your hard drive, then like I said, first just stick to Brad Garcia's guide which is at the link I pasted above remembering ofcourse the missing "CTRL-z" command after powering your hard drive OFF/ON after the "N1" command, and secondly remembering that the hard drive's "RX" pin is the closest pin to the hard drive's DATA port.

Some people who have had this BSY state error on their hard drives and have fixed it, had to ALSO do the LBA error fix which is also in the 1st page of this Gradius guide. This happens when they fixed the BSY state error to get BIOS to detect the hard drive but BIOS shows it as 0GB for it's size which is why they had to do the LBA error fix after this BSY state error. It's called Double Bricking.

I have already ordered 4 Western Digital hard drives and will be throwing my Seagate hard drives into a pile of donkey sh!t then p!ssing on them followed by some vomit, and will make it my MISSION to turn people away from Seagate/Maxtor/Quantum hard drives and sticking to Western Digital and Samsung hard drives. FVCK YOU SEAGATE !!! Got my DATA back you wh0res.

Also, I'm making a new gang called D2S (Death 2 Seagate) if anyone's interested let me know

Again, Gradius really appreciate it and Brad Garcia thanks heaps.

Edited January 21, 2010 by the$#!Za.

[jaclaz]

So for 2 weeks I totally wasted my time, as I was running my TTL-RS232 adapter using the power supply's "red" 5V wire, when I should of used the power supply's "orange" 3.3V wire. If you've tried everything and are positive your connections are right but you just can't get the magical "F3 T>" prompt when pressing "CTRL-z", try 3.3V instead of 5V for your TTl-RS232 adapter power source.

Well, it depends on the actual board you have, if you have a 5V powered converter you use the Red wire, if you have a 3.3V powered one you use the Orange, I would have thought it was obvious that the procedure has to be adapted to the actual hardware one has, as there are so many variants of the converter circuits it's simply not possible to cover all of them, some will work allright with practically any voltage between 2.9 and 6 V, some are more "picky" however, BTW the original Gradius guide uses a 3V battery

jaclaz

[Tracy]

Another HD fixed! A big Thank You to everybody who has contributed to this thread.

I used this CA-42 cable of ebay,

It has this chip inside. ( PL-2303 )

Black = Ground, White = Rx, Blue = Tx,

I found using a separate PSU really helps when fixing the HD and I used, as suggested also, cables from an old CD audio cable for connecting the HD to the USB cable.

I did have a small problem when I got to this part (doing busy fix),

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

I waited 45 minutes and nothing happend . Reading what other people have said previously in this topic though, it was not something to worry about.

I did this to get it to work;

Press ctrl+z - to get back to prompt

Disconnected Hyper terminal - Call => Disconnect in Win XP Hyper terminal

Unplugged the HD - (Powered off, not unplug Ground, TX, RX cables), Switched off the PSU.

*

Plugged the Sata Power cable back in and Switched back on the PSU.

Connected again to Hyper terminal and ran the process again.

This time it worked.

*I did want to find out what happend to the drive at this stage, so attached a sata data cable and booted it up on another PC. In the Bios it was recognized but as a 0GB drive. It looks to me that both problems are one of the same but are at different stages.

HD now updated to the latest firmware and fully fixed

[tegrabluefish]

So after you got it to work. and show up in BIOS it was detected as 0GB.. did you do the other fix??? or after you got it to show up as 0GB you just updated the firmware and it now works??

I have a CA-42 cable with different colors and RX and TX cables than the guy above mentioned using. and I'm now able to type in hyper but nothing works. I don't ever get another prompt for ANYTHING... So I'm not sure if this is a COM, or a hyper, or cable problem. I swear I made the cable correct. it's been a few months though as I gave up for a short time. but I NEEEED my stuff now.

Does anyone have a cable that FOR SURE works that I can buy, or borrow. I will pay for shipping to and from if needed. I just really need to fix this thing.

My other question is about Hyperterminal. I've never used it. How do I know what COM port is correct. If I'm plugging it into my laptop or PC with a USB, what COM port is it. and why does my current hyperterminal private edition 7.0 never give me another choice but COM3.? any help would be amazing.. I'm hoping to get a for sure cable from someone though. Thanks!

Another Question is how do I do a Loopback test?? Thanks!

Edited January 22, 2010 by tegrabluefish

[the$#!Za.]

Well, it depends on the actual board you have, if you have a 5V powered converter you use the Red wire, if you have a 3.3V powered one you use the Orange, I would have thought it was obvious that the procedure has to be adapted to the actual hardware one has, as there are so many variants of the converter circuits it's simply not possible to cover all of them, some will work allright with practically any voltage between 2.9 and 6 V, some are more "picky" however, BTW the original Gradius guide uses a 3V battery

jaclaz

Hi jaclaz. Well I have the SparkFun Shifter SMD which Gradius lists here ; http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_i...products_id=449 and even though it does handle 5V, I simply could not get it working properly until I changed the power source from 5V down to 3.3V, why ? I don't know. Yes you're right about Gradius using a 3V battery himself however he does say connect it to the power supply's red wire if not using battery/batteries.

So after you got it to work. and show up in BIOS it was detected as 0GB.. did you do the other fix??? or after you got it to show up as 0GB you just updated the firmware and it now works??

Hi tegrabluefish. Some people do get the LBA 0GB error after the BSY state error such as yourself and have done the LBA 0GB fix after doing the BSY state error fix.

Someone did mention in this massive thread somewhere that he would let people borrow the cable if they cover shipping there and back but which page is it on, that's the question. Even though people are buying the same Nokia CA-42 cable, the wiring inside is sometimes different either by having more than 3 or having different colour codes to each other as well as not all of them have the TX, RX Ground etc labelled on the USB side.

Here's a video link of a girl using the Nokia CA-42 cable way to fix the hard drive ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29FztWJVxbM and this other link shows a guy using the girl's guide but gives more information as he had a different Nokia CA-42 cable ;

. Maybe this will help you.

My other question is about Hyperterminal. I've never used it. How do I know what COM port is correct. If I'm plugging it into my laptop or PC with a USB, what COM port is it. and why does my current hyperterminal private edition 7.0 never give me another choice but COM3.? any help would be amazing.. I'm hoping to get a for sure cable from someone though. Thanks!

Another Question is how do I do a Loopback test?? Thanks!

If you're using Windows Vista or Windows 7, everyone recommends TeraTerm instead of Hyper Terminal, but if you're on Windows XP then it's ok. I'm not sure what the Nokia CA-42 cable shows the COM port as in Windows Device Manager, but if you have it unplugged, have a look under your "PORTS (COM & LPT)" OR "Modems" section for Nokia cable users in your Device Manager, plug your cable in and check what is new in the list, as each time you unplug the cable from the PC, it will disappear in Device Manager and only shows if it's plugged in. It should say in brackets what COM port number it is and if not, just double click it or right click and go to "properties" to see what COM port number it is. In the first link I gave you of the girl using the Nokia CA-42 cable, she uses Motorola drivers for the Nokia CA-42 cable to work in her PC and it shows in her Device Manager under the "Modems" section as "Motorola Comp Modem" or something similar.

After finding out what COM port number it is, open your Terminal program, choose the cable's COM port and configure it like her video shows which is from top to bottom "38400, 8, None, 1, None" which are speed and bit settings for your connection.

The loopback test is easy. This has nothing to do with the hard drive itself so dont plug anything into it for the loopback test. You just have to plug a jumper wire or similar to loop the signal back to your PC from the cable's "TX" to "RX" or "RX" to "TX" it doesn't matter which way as long as they're connected to each other. Then open your Terminal program, turn on the "local echo" option and anything you type, you should see double characters, for example if you typed "abcde" it should show as "aabbccddee" which would confirm the cable/adapter is sending receiving OK. Remember to turn OFF the "local echo" option after finished with Loopback testing and you're ready to connect to your hard drive.

You can see some pictures and explained better at this Brad Garcia guide here ; http://sites.google.com/site/seagatefix/ ,scroll down to his "Testing the RS232-to-TTL Adapter" section of the guide. Even though he's using the RS232-TTL adapter, the Loopback principle is the same for cables also.

Goodluck.

[cemi]

At first, great thanks to Gradius and everybody provided help in this thread.

Great news for everybody, I fixed the BSY error for my 7200.11 1T HDD, and I would like to share some experiences.

At first, I followed all the steps but something wrong in the last step. I got nothing in the m0,2,2,0,0,0,0,22 command(I just waited for 3 minutes, I power off the HDD too early), and then disconnect the hyper terminal, and after that I connected everything again and ran the m0,2,2,0,0,0,0,22 again, after about ten minutes I got something below

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

Max Wr Retries = 00, Max Rd Retries = 00, Max ECC T-Level = 00, Max Certify Rewrite Retries = 0000

And about another ten minutes later, I got something like these below

User Partition Format 5% complete, Zone 00, Pass 00, LBA 00008DED, ErrCode 00000080, Elapsed Time 0 mins 05 secs

User Partition Format Successful - Elapsed Time 0 mins 05 secs

I power off HDD when I got this messages and then I plug the HDD to my PC and turn it on, everything is OK. So if you encounter problems in the process, don’t panic, your HDD and data are safe. Just find out the problem and then try again. There is nothing to worry about.

[jaclaz]

Hi jaclaz. Well I have the SparkFun Shifter SMD which Gradius lists here ; http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_i...products_id=449 and even though it does handle 5V, I simply could not get it working properly until I changed the power source from 5V down to 3.3V, why ? I don't know. Yes you're right about Gradius using a 3V battery himself however he does say connect it to the power supply's red wire if not using battery/batteries.

There has been a misunderstanding:

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_i...products_id=449

Shifter SMD is powered from the target application and can run at any voltage! That's right - power the board at 5V and the unit will convert RS232 to 5V TTL. Power the board at 2.8V and the Shifter board will convert RS232 to 2.8V CMOS TTL.

Let's see if I can clear it.

There are two different "TLL" levels standard, a "5V" and a a "3.3V" (sometimes called "2.8V") one.

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

The hard disk "wants" or "likes" the 3.3V ones.

A converter can be:

• powered at 5V and output a 5V TTL level signals <-this WON'T work
  
• powered at 2.8V÷3.3 and output 3.3/2.8V TTL level signals <-this WILL work
  
• powered at 5V and ouput 3.3/2.8V TTL level signals, or more generally powered at ANY voltage and output a 3.3/2.8V TTL level signals<-this WILL work
  
• powered at 5V and ouput BOTH 5V and 3.3/2.8V TTL level signals, or more generally powered at ANY voltage and output BOTH 5V and 3.3/2.8V TTL level signals<-this WILL work if the HD is connected to the "right" TX/RX" of the converter
  

That particular converter you used/got "autoswitches" output TTL level based on the voltage it is powered with.

In other words it has an "advanced" feature that turned out as a problem in your case.

jaclaz