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ST3500320AS (SD15) restore data after BSY error fix


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Hello everyone,

I got the BSY error with my Barracuda drive, one day it would simply not show up in the BIOS anymore. I performed the fix like described in the sticky thread. It seemed to me that everything worked fine, as the drive got recognized again. But somehow the drive is seriously "broken" now as I don't see my partition and the drive "crashes" if software wants to access certain sectors. More on that later.

As jaclaz suggested (thanks for the help!!) I tried to read the data via "dd" command as Linux was able to at least access the drive on a low level. The first 95938272 sectors (49,1 GB) copied just fine but as soon as any software (also ddrescue) wants to access the next sector or anything beyond it'll return some generic I/O error and after that the drive is not able to communicate any longer. Even the sectors I was able to read before are not accessible afterwards. If I power cycle the drive I'm able to access those first GBs again, but simply nothing beyond.

Any ideas on what that means?

BTW: The tool "photorec" is able to recover my media files from the 49GB chunk of data. Looks good to me so far even 1GB big video files seem to be undamaged so I think the actual content on the disk is ok. I had no luck with "testdisk" so far though which would keep the filenames. Any chance to access the rest of the drive?

thanks in advance & best regards!

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Two separate answers.

You may want to try (on the recovered 49 GB chunk) the DMDE tool, since (normally) the $MFT starts on LCN 786432, i.e. sector 6291456 of the volume, or roughly 3 GB from the start, it is within the recovered chunk, so there should be no issues with recovering path/filenames:

https://dmde.com/

For the rest of the disk you may want to try a disk tool that can read/image the disk "backwards", in some cases it can help recovering data that "forward" reading does not.

Unfortunately, though,  I suspect that the rest of the disk is actually "bricked" in such a way that recovery - even if maybe partially possible - is outside and beyond the possibilities of DIY, only a professional (maybe) can afford the needed tools and has (maybe) the knowledge to recover that data.

You may want to try asking for support/help/ideas here:

http://www.hddoracle.com/index.php

jaclaz

 

 

 

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Thanks again for the help!

DMDE is indeed able to recover the filenames too. Unfortunately most of the data is empty zeros of course.

Yeah I'm afraid I already knew that this is a bigger issue. Don't have a clue on how that happened though...

Is there no way to achieve something via rs232 interface or even read it byte by byte? Or change the PCB and just grad everything left on the discs?

I opened a thread at hhd oracle but it's not reviewed yet.

man what a bummer to loose one's data because of a buffer overflow in the hdd firmware... I know it's my fault though that I didn't have any backups as I didn't consider it critical data.

thanks and best regards

Edited by ufbafigawe
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2 hours ago, ufbafigawe said:

man what a bummer to loose one's data because of a buffer overflow in the hdd firmware... I know it's my fault though that I didn't have any backups as I didn't consider it critical data.

thanks and best regards

Well, technically, we don't have any actual evidence that it was the original counter (not buffer) issue.

Not that it helps you :( in any way, but the actual reason may well be any among the zillion ones that can brick a drive (and that by pure coincidence the known procedure can partially solve).

About attempting to change the PCB, simply DON'T:

On a modern hard disk replacing the PCB implies replicating the so-called "adaptive data", this is (poor man's method) achieved by transplanting (desoldering/resoldering) the "ROM" (actually EPROM) from the old PCB to the new one, or by professionals by using specialized hardware to save its contents and then restore them to the "new" PCB.

To complicate the matter some hard disks use to store "internal" (and "vital") data part on the ROM and part on the platters (cannot say specifically if it is the Seagate 7200.11 case).

There are tools (either software or hardware+software) to (hopefully) repair failed drives (assuming that the failure is not mechanical - i.e. heads/platters/motor) but they are in a range of price (between 400 and 10,000/12,000) that exclude the use for a DIY job (and besides they are usually terribly documented or so complex that you won't be able to use them without taking some courses and some experience).

jaclaz

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