MadOCer

The problems might not be caused by the question of real or fake cables, but rather by USB based timing problems. USB is known not to work too well in timing sensitive scenarios. Perhaps that's what is causing problems here. Just a guess, though. Will try to get my hands on a real Com-port to TTL adapter and use that directly, on some board that still has a native com-port..

Well. NO. You need TTL level signals. Serial output is NOT normally at TTL levels: http://www.arcelect.com/rs232.htm DO NOT connect directly a RS232 to HD. the "thing" connected to the HD needs to be TTL: http://www.interfacebus.com/voltage_threshold.html TTL uses much lower voltage! jaclaz And why shoud that be dangerous? Or let me rephrase: Why does it work for so many people without the extra TTL converter? USB uses 5V and for example the FT2232 needs a LDO regulator to bring that down to 3.3V anyway. Maybe there are other converter chips that use 5V directly, but I doubt that. So, please explain in detail why it should be dangerous? If I'm wrong, I'll be happy to learn something new.

All you need is the USB to serial port converter. You don't need the additional RS232 converter. Don't knwo how you came up with this. It's either, or, not both. Try it with the USB cable alone. Should work as desired as long as you have the drivers configured right.

You can try again from the start, but there is no guarantee that it a) will work this time and B) there isn't anything else wrong with your drive. Good luck with your further tries. Hope you'll be more successful than me recently. But for detailed instructions I'm clearly the wrong person and aviko and co. seem to have left the thread some time ago. No wonder. This thread started at the beginning of this year. But still there are lots of defective 7200.11.

You should have turned the drive off long ago. When it doesn't respond in anything less than 5-10 minutes, then it didn't do anything from the start anyways. So no reason to keep it powered on for hours.

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. 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. i amke meauserement and this 21.8V - 18.5V was this which i used accidentali and correct have 14.2V it showed it when i measured it without connection and with connection to external hdd. i hope it is everything what you need. Thank you for patience You most likely killed your external hard drive enclosure and MAYBE the drive, too. If it's a 500GB 7200.11 it should definitely have the suppressor diode to save the drive. That means the drive is unuseable now, but could perhaps be recued pretty easily. BUT, did you test the drive alone, without the external enclosure? If you did and the drive appears to be dead, then I'll tell you where to look for the diode(s). If one of the diodes burnt through, then you probably have a short circuit on the S-ATA power connector. So check that first. Have a look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA And check if there are any short circuits on the power connector where there shouldn't be any. Remember, I had one between 12V and GND. So the multimeter in "continuity test" beeped when connecting one probe to the 12V power planes and the other to a GND plane. Regarding my own drives: BTW, I came to the conclusion that my last 500GB drive seems to have an electrical defect. It began to sound strange and the PCB get pretty hot in some spots where the good drives stay much cooler. The 1TB drive seems to have another form of defect which I'm not quite sure about yet. I can change some things through commands on the terminal, but as soon as I remove power, it reverts completely back to where it used to be. Not being detected by BIOS and without much information. That means for example I can restore the default drive settings by using the command "F,,22", but after removing power, it'll be back to the old settings. And everytime I try the command "m0,2,2,,,,,22", the drive stops spinning (I heard and felt that it did) and the terminal just hangs. Very strange, indeed.

If you know what you are doing, then overclocking on Intel based, as well as AMD based system isn't very hard these days. Nearly all motherboards come with overclocking options integrated into the BIOS. Some with more detailed options, some with less. The question if it's worth it is a question that can't be easily answered. It all depends on what you are doing with your system and what parts the system contains. If you really need the extra power, then it sure is worth it as you can get extra power at nearly no cost. On the other hand I doubt that most poeple who indeed do overclock their rigs, really need it. I used to overclock each and every computer part that I could, for years. In the last 1-2 years I had only limited time and only one system that was also the system to do my study works on. So that system had to run and had to be stable while running, so it stayed at stock speeds. And what shall I say: For the amount of coding, using virtual machines, watching movies and playing a game at non high end settings, every now and then, even a stock clocked Xeon 3050, 3GB of RAM and a HD2400XT were enough. So, it's up to you to decide if it's worth performance-wise and in regards to the time that it takes to get a fully stable overclocked system.

Post pictures of your setup. Without details there is no way to tell where the problem is. We're no psyhchics after all.

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. 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.

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.

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. 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).

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.