spankerer

well... looks like my 7200.11 got screwed up again... quite royally too this time. I've got 2 7200.11 500 GBs, one of them which died from the BSY and rescued, both of them were flashed with SD1A. The one which didn't die had Vista on it, and starting 2 months ago I was seeing some bad sectors, which gradually got worse. chkdsk /v /f didn't do much to fix it and Vista's event logs have numerous entries which states that it has bad blocks and there are corrupted file reports everywhere. Looks like I had better RMA that unit

How would optimizing the OS affect the HDD? if indeed it's a journaling problem (does NTFS use journaling?) Anyways, I've got BOTH 7200.11 500GB running on SD1A now (one of up unbricked using your solution, thanks!), I have a 640 GB Western D for my important files, and using Drive Image to back up the OS drive to newly unbricked drive. Seagate's such a b***h.

Hi all, I finally managed to revive my HDD with the Nokia CA-42/DKU-5 cable. To whomever it was who came up with the steps to recover the HDD, you have my heartfelt gratitude, whether it be gradius or the dudes at Ace Labs or the HDD Doctor dudes. Without the instructions, I would not have been able to revive the HDD, without gradius I'd still be searching (and waiting) for a working solution. Thank you, my data was worth far more than a crummy Seagate HDD

This is why I told to you guys, that method (swapping PCBs) is way too risky. Well, if the drive is still recognized by BIOS, try to re-flash the "good" one, if even after that you get the same result, then yes, you killed the drive. Hey Gradius, I'd like to ask if this module will work (it's the only TTL supplier I can find in this whole frickin' country on the web). No luck finding one in an IT district. http://www.bizchip.com/kits.html Part is BZ001, and it requires external power supply but I have no idea what does +7V-18V mean. Thanks a bunch!

Kuala Lumpur. I'm gonna try hunting for some TTL adapters tomorrow, the RS232 to TTL is a rarity. But one thing we have tons of for cheap are cell phone data cables.

I don't recommend this method, the reading/writing HEAD goes crazy and can kill the platters by scratching them. Actually it didn't go crazy. It try to align 8 times (I counted), and then the head disables and stop. []'s I counted 11 times for my 500 GB. And it doesn't work for me. The BIOS picks up the HDD (bad PCB on good disk which had been flashed with SD1A), then doesn't continue booting. Maybe it's my BIOS, but skipped the BIOS detection (by plugging in the power after booting from the CDROM doesn't work either, it picks up the HDD when scanning, but after that says ST3500320AS expected, tried a few other variations, all unsuccessful. Now everything is back to previous configuration. I hope I had not permanently bricked the faulty drive. Looks like I'll have to search harder for the RS232 - TTL adapter By the way Gradius, do i need an RS232 to TTL converter or will a USB to TTL converter do as well? I've seen some of those sold around. Not sure if I can get my hands on one of those. Will any TTL connector do?

Question, after you swap the PCB boards, and then you boot up, does the BIOS detect the HDD?

I have 2 500 GBs, one has the BSY error, the other one still functions. So i flashed the survivor. I'm still looking for the RS232-TTL part to fix my bricked HDD.

Ok I successfully flash my ST3500320AS to the SD1A firmware. Hopefully it will work fine until the end of it's natural life cycle.

Hey poolcarpet, You didn't have any luck finding the RS232 to TTL device from PJ? I went looking for it at DigitalMall, no luck. I hope you ordered extras The SD1A patch now work with my ST3500320AS 500 GB Drive updated Jan. 22,2009 4:18 PM (GMT+08:00) Taipei Does it work on drives in the BSY state?

Thanks fatlip. will eagerly await the video. Right now I'm understandably confused by the 5V and 3.3V and which ones I should be doing etc etc. On top of that finding that RS232 chippy thingy is harder than I thought (buying from eBay is not an option for me I live on the other side of the planet). If possible can we get a clear footage on removing the connector since that part seemed to be a delicate part of the process. Thanks again, you the man, man!

Hmm... that probably means the HDD is rejecting all ATA commands, hence the timeouts. Maybe users with LBA0 will have better luck with this. For those with BIOS not detecting they're pretty much out of luck. The symptons seem pretty erratic, may not be caused by NCQ as personally my drive was unused when I powered off the PC, and when I powered it back up, well you know the rest.

Hi all, My 500 GB 7200.11 went under yesterday, on the same day I lost my job, and that hard disk has my resume on it. It was not a good day. Anyway, I didn't want to risk losing the OTHER 500 GB disk (yeah, shouldn't have bought 2 of it), so I turned it off in BIOS and booted up with SLAX. The funniest thing happened that is the kernel is able to pick up the undamaged HDD even though I disabled it in BIOS! I can even mount it! Tried it with the broken HDD, detected a hard disk drive but faces a timeout (probably at retrieving device info). Since the ATA commands are pretty well documented, I was wondering if it is possible to send an unlock ATA command to the drive so the arm will move again? This would remove the need for the R232 serial port connector and make life a whole lot easier. But i think the biggest problem would be t figure out what command to send (if we can send it).