Jump to content

The Solution for Seagate 7200.11 HDDs


Recommended Posts

We fixed a Seagate 7200.11 with a BSY error. (drive was no longer detected by our computers' Bios)

We followed Gradius2's directions with some necessary mods to them.

Equipment used (as labeled in photo)

1. USB to Serial Port cable ( RS232)

2. Radio Shack AAA Battery housing for two batteries

3. RS232 to TTY/CMOS converter for $5 at http://alldav.com/index.php?main_page=prod...;products_id=11

4. Two mini pin jumpers - taken from an old printer cable

5. Hyperterminal running on windows xp laptop

6. External power supply to run the Seagate hard drive

http://yfrog.com/5giwonthewarj

iwonthewar.jpg

w640.png

Notes/Deviations from Gradius' directions:

A. Added ground wire. The ground pin on drive itself was too small to get a good ground connection.

We soldered a wire (labeled A) from a ground pin on the TTY converter to a screw hole on the hard drive's motherboard. (Various points on the circuit board including the plug hardware of the TTY converter, that one would assume were ground, in fact were not grounded!) The only good point to make an easy solder contact on the TTY board was the pin in photo - labeled A

B. In item B in the picture we have a black and red wire with a very messy splicing job. W spliced out bits of the wire several times. We think it is necessary to keep the Tx Rx wires very short. (When the wires were longer we got jibberish)

It is our impression that if you have a VERY good ground connection and also a decent Tx Rx connection the jibberish stops.

C. Using our particular brand of serial to TTY converter we established our connection with the hard drive using

Rx -> Rx and Tx ->Tx (Opposite of what we were expecting)

D. Hyperterminal:

Make sure you follow the hyperterminal setup guide in this forum.

Our drive is the Seagate 7200.11 500GB ST3500320AS. This drive communicates at a speed of 38400. The other drives affected by this lock out problem connect at various other speeds. Make sure you put in your particular connection speed in both hyperterminal and under device manager for your serial port (or usb to serial port converter) This also goes for the Com ports, whichever number you use has to go both in hyperterminal and under device manager settings.

After everything is setup it is a good idea to check your progress with a simple hyperterminal test :

By connecting the Tx and Rx wires to each other with an alligator clip or something, with the hard drive disconnected,

you should be able to type a letter on the key board and see it show up on hyperterminal

If this is the case then connecting to your hard drive via Tx Rx wires and a very good ground you should be ready to

communicate.

If you have a Seagate 7200.11 500GB ST3500320AS with Firmware SD15 that is not being recognized by your systems bios feel free to contact ditchawg At hotmail DOT com

We are by no means experts, but after spending two months on this we hate for our efforts to go to waste.

Edited by tacopilot
Link to comment
Share on other sites


If anyone is looking for a cheap CA-42 cable, try seller 'ukmobile786' on ebay. He has the CA-42 for £1.99 including UK postage and he is very quick in sending it out. I'm awaiting a T6 driver to remove the screws on my drive, so will update you later on whether I've been successful in de-bricking my STM3500320AS.

The CA-42 cable I received has 3 wires only, GND, TX and RX. I've tested the cable in hyperterminal and everything looks good to go.

(My cable pinout*: Red = TX, Blue = RX, Orange = GND) *Make sure you find your own cable pinout to minimise the risk of shorting anything.

Thanks to Gradius and everyone that contributed to this post; I now have my 500gb drive back.

The £2 cable I got from Ebay worked perfectly, although I did have the RX and TX the wrong way round. *I didn't need to connect the GND to the drive.

I used the paper trick, 1 for the motor and another for the connector, bit of overkill.

If you're unsure about cables, use the ebay guy. Saves you having to buy twice!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guys, I fear I need a hand here.

But first big THX to all who contributed to the solutions posted here. Really great thread and a justification why the internet isn't just useful for spammers. :)

Now on to the problem.

I have two defective drives here:

1x ST3500820AS (FW: SD35)

1x ST31000333AS (FW: SD15)

Both drives behave about the same. They both were not recognized by BIOS and both got me the "LED:000000CE" Error when trying to spin them down with the Z command (BTW, my adapter works, fine as I repaired another drive using it and also did the loopback test before).

I then used the repair PDF posted by aviko (THX alot for that, really highly appreciated!!!) which said to unscrew the whole PCB. Did that and got around the spindown LED error and also could spin up both drives (the 1TB drive refused at first, but could've been due to heavily oxidized head and motor contacts that I then cleaned).

I can use anything but the "m0,2,2,,,,,22" command. If I try that, both drives do nothing and just hang there indefinitely without doing anything. I waited more than 10 minutes for anything to come up. I think I missed something, although I tried to read each and every post in this thread. To formulate it again: I followed the instructions and everything works alright, but the last command, quoted above, just leads to a hang on both drives. And as I don't eveen know what the commands do, I obviously can't tell what's wrong. :)

If there's no hope for these drives, OK, but if there is a possible solution, I would be very happy if one of you gurus could help me here. I mean the drives seem to be electrically OK (checked the PCB) and they also don't make any weird noises. So I just hope they can be brought back from the dead.

BIG THX in advance and sorry if the solution was already posted. I just couldn't find anything that seemed to address this very problem. in the meantime I look through the thread again. Perhaps I'll find the solution on my own.

Greets

Ingmar :)

EDit1: BTW, tried to disconnect the drives from power before executing the m0,2,2,,,,,22 command, but that didn't help either. I'm quite puzzled. Is their a certain way, to make this work, if it doesn't work like the guide suggests. I'll certainly keep trying, but I'm a bit confused right now.

Edited by MadOCer
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello

I have set up everything but am getting into a problem here: when doing Ctrl+Z only a small arrow appears.

- Loopback works fine (but slow maybe 15 seconds since writing and appearing on screen - is it normal ?)

- Tried changing TX/RX and back again, no difference

- Tried 3.3V and 5V no success either

- COM port is 38400 8 N 1 N as usual

- Is there something in the BIOS RS232 that should be changed?

- PCB is off disk, and on disk too but no difference

- PCB heats up too, so it's working

My RS232 TTL is this: http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt...em=360166176686

Please help me too

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello i have problem with my hdd it is seagate ST3500320AS firmware is SD15,

i am using it as an external drive, and yeasterday i used wrong power supply and my drive make diferent noise, and after when i used the properly power supply then it just start working but i can not find it on bios ,windows like it is not exist.

Can this procedure which you explained her working for me??

Thank you

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello

I have set up everything but am getting into a problem here: when doing Ctrl+Z only a small arrow appears.

- Loopback works fine (but slow maybe 15 seconds since writing and appearing on screen - is it normal ?)

- Tried changing TX/RX and back again, no difference

- Tried 3.3V and 5V no success either

- COM port is 38400 8 N 1 N as usual

- Is there something in the BIOS RS232 that should be changed?

- PCB is off disk, and on disk too but no difference

- PCB heats up too, so it's working

My RS232 TTL is this: http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt...em=360166176686

Please help me too

15 seconds delay sounds strange. That is really slow. Much too slow I'd say. Something is wrong. And additionally you perhaps have RX and TX connected the wrong way. Did that accidently yesterday and of course no response from terminal then. Switched them and all is working (besides my problem described above). Give it a try and also make sure that the adapter is working a 100% before using it on the actual drive. You sure don't want to make it worse than it already is.

Hello i have problem with my hdd it is seagate ST3500320AS firmware is SD15,

i am using it as an external drive, and yeasterday i used wrong power supply and my drive make diferent noise, and after when i used the properly power supply then it just start working but i can not find it on bios ,windows like it is not exist.

Can this procedure which you explained her working for me??

Thank you

Using a wrong power supply (BTW, define "wrong"; wrong voltage, wrong amperage or what? details please) normally has no direct efffect on the firmware. So you probably bricked your drive due to overvoltage. BUT, there is a chance that the drive has a supressor diode that just burnt through. Replacing that could bring the drive back. But that is only a guess. I recently had a 500GB 7200.11 here that had exactly that problem. There was a short between 12V and GND, which was caused by overvoltage on the 12V rail. Replacing or just desoldering of the suppressor diode brought the drive back. Tested and works fine (Seatools long test passed without problems).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Absolutely OFF TOPIC :ph34r:, but it's the first "racist" seller on e-bay I have ever seen:

Ship To :

US, Canada, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Ireland,

France, Germany, Netherland, Spain,Portugal, Poland, Austria,

Beligum, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden & Switzerland

By Airmail

Other Locations, please ASK

WILL NOT SHIP TO ITALY

:w00t:

jaclaz

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ah, nevermind, success!!!

I redone the tutorial and worked great. Got access to both my partitions and everything is good now! Thank you all of you.

I begin to feel kind of dumb. Either my drives a bricked for good, or I'm still missing something.

I tried several times already and with my 1TB drive I can do what I want, I just don't get the last command to work. As for lots of poeple before it just causes a hang. Strange. I'll have to give it yet another try tomorrow. The 500GB drive is acting strange, too. Had it working as far as being able to issue a spindown and spinup and anything else, other than the last command, like on the 1TB drive. But today the 500GB drive was back to being completely busy and giving me the LED:000000CE error. Though I had that cleared. I'm starting to lose my hope here. Any helps appreciated, guys. ;)

I mean I already fixed my other 2 drives, but with these 2 I'm just not getting anywhere.

Edited by MadOCer
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello

I have set up everything but am getting into a problem here: when doing Ctrl+Z only a small arrow appears.

- Loopback works fine (but slow maybe 15 seconds since writing and appearing on screen - is it normal ?)

- Tried changing TX/RX and back again, no difference

- Tried 3.3V and 5V no success either

- COM port is 38400 8 N 1 N as usual

- Is there something in the BIOS RS232 that should be changed?

- PCB is off disk, and on disk too but no difference

- PCB heats up too, so it's working

My RS232 TTL is this: http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt...em=360166176686

Please help me too

15 seconds delay sounds strange. That is really slow. Much too slow I'd say. Something is wrong. And additionally you perhaps have RX and TX connected the wrong way. Did that accidently yesterday and of course no response from terminal then. Switched them and all is working (besides my problem described above). Give it a try and also make sure that the adapter is working a 100% before using it on the actual drive. You sure don't want to make it worse than it already is.

Hello i have problem with my hdd it is seagate ST3500320AS firmware is SD15,

i am using it as an external drive, and yeasterday i used wrong power supply and my drive make diferent noise, and after when i used the properly power supply then it just start working but i can not find it on bios ,windows like it is not exist.

Can this procedure which you explained her working for me??

Thank you

Using a wrong power supply (BTW, define "wrong"; wrong voltage, wrong amperage or what? details please) normally has no direct efffect on the firmware. So you probably bricked your drive due to overvoltage. BUT, there is a chance that the drive has a supressor diode that just burnt through. Replacing that could bring the drive back. But that is only a guess. I recently had a 500GB 7200.11 here that had exactly that problem. There was a short between 12V and GND, which was caused by overvoltage on the 12V rail. Replacing or just desoldering of the suppressor diode brought the drive back. Tested and works fine (Seatools long test passed without problems).

it was adapter which have 21.8V without connection and when it is connected it is 18.5V. this numbers i get by measurement, but on this adapter it is Input 230V~50Hz 140mA Output 12V - 1A. Can you tell me how it is looking that diode, or how exactly i can fix it?

Thank you

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

I conect HDD like you say with com port to RS232 and RS232 to TTL(i use this circuit to conect phone and i don't have any problems there).But here i don't have any comunations with HDD though Hiper terminal or other programs which I use to connect with phones.I chek everything and its like you say.

Do you have any idea what my be the problem.

Thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

...

it was adapter which have 21.8V without connection and when it is connected it is 18.5V. this numbers i get by measurement, but on this adapter it is Input 230V~50Hz 140mA Output 12V - 1A. Can you tell me how it is looking that diode, or how exactly i can fix it?

Thank you

The question is: What are the correct power suppply specifications. Just telling me some numbers, without stating which one is the correct and which one the wrong power supply, doesn't really help much. if you did that, then we can talk about the diode, if this talk is necessary at all then. ;)

Hi,

I conect HDD like you say with com port to RS232 and RS232 to TTL(i use this circuit to conect phone and i don't have any problems there).But here i don't have any comunations with HDD though Hiper terminal or other programs which I use to connect with phones.I chek everything and its like you say.

Do you have any idea what my be the problem.

Thanks!

Are you sure that the adapter is working? Try the loopback test. If that works, you probably have connected RX and TX the wrong way on the HDD.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

...

it was adapter which have 21.8V without connection and when it is connected it is 18.5V. this numbers i get by measurement, but on this adapter it is Input 230V~50Hz 140mA Output 12V - 1A. Can you tell me how it is looking that diode, or how exactly i can fix it?

Thank you

The question is: What are the correct power suppply specifications. Just telling me some numbers, without stating which one is the correct and which one the wrong power supply, doesn't really help much. if you did that, then we can talk about the diode, if this talk is necessary at all then. ;)

Hi,

I conect HDD like you say with com port to RS232 and RS232 to TTL(i use this circuit to conect phone and i don't have any problems there).But here i don't have any comunations with HDD though Hiper terminal or other programs which I use to connect with phones.I chek everything and its like you say.

Do you have any idea what my be the problem.

Thanks!

Are you sure that the adapter is working? Try the loopback test. If that works, you probably have connected RX and TX the wrong way on the HDD.

Yes I'm sure because i use it to conect with phones and its working.I try to change RX and TX but its not comunicate.I try with HDD connect to see is it give me that error LED:.... but nothing

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...