lewisspearing

Hey Guys! My Name is Lewis Spearing and I am 15 Years Old. Here is my Hard Drive Story! Its a long one, so if you dont want to read it, feel free to skip! For my 13th birthday I got a 500GB Maxtor External HDD! I was so thrilled at the time, due to my laptops HDD was so low, I had so much more space! The drive lasted a good 2 years before one day it suddenly died. Before it died it was acting extremely slow and it didnt wont to open anything! The next time I tried to open the drive, it completely crashed... A couple of months before it died, I was messing around with out family computer and decided to put the Windows 7 Beta on it. I copied across all of my families files, including 10GB of my families pictures and 18GB of Music. Once the Windows 7 Beta was installed I plugged in my Maxtor External HDD. For some reason it show up in my computer, so I decided to boot up into Ubuntu and copy the files across manually via that. I first started with the Music, the 18GBs of Music took forever to copy across, i decided not to copy my families photos and do it at a later date. I never got round to do this. So, a couple of months later, my external HDD died and I was pretty upset. All my families photos (from 2003-2009 (a majority of myself and my siblings childhood photos)) were all on the drive, and now, all gone. I told my parents and they were really upset, it seemed like my mum wanted to cry.. Time went by and when I was 14, earlier this year, I went to PC World for work experience. I met loads of great people there, and one fellow geek who said he could take a bash at fixing my drive. At a later date I took round my Maxtor External Hard Drive and we took it apart, finding out it was a Barracuda 7200.11 ST3750330AS with the SD81 firmware on it. We tried freezing the drive but no luck. He then encouraged me to go online and find a replica drive and swap the board thing over. I went home, told my parents this and then decided to buy a new drive. A week later and I had no confirmation that the drive was being sent, I rang up the retailer and they informed me that the drive was discontinued and they could sell me a newer one. I said no and was stumped. I began to do some research and try to think of away I could fix my drive, and then I saw this board, and the unfortunate news that more or less everyones 7200.11 drive were failing. I talked to the IT Technician at school and we discussed what how we could fix it. I saw later that evening on YouTube a person fixing their drive using a Nokia CA-42 cable, so I went online and brought an original cable for £14.99. I got it the following week and took it into school. Me and the Technician then spent the next 35 minute lunch time constructing a cable that would hopefully fix my drive! The next day, it was done and the cable was finished! Here is what it looked like ! We plugged it into the Hard Drive and began to, one by one, enter in the commands. After the final command, we replugged in the HDD, and magically in My Computer, popped up a new Hard Disk! I screamed with excitement as the thought of having my photos back was amazing! We then went to open it and then, we were greeted with a foul message: The file or directory is corrupt and non-readable.The file or directory is corrupt and non-readable. I was heart broken. The IT Technician then took it inside the geek room and began to scan the drive with Recuva . At the end of the 3 hour scan, only 127 files were recovered. None of which were the family photos I desired. The last idea we had before we gave up was to boot up into Ubuntu! We booted it up and the drive once again popped up, like in Windows. We opened up the Hard Disk and it worked! However, only half the files were there. In total, around 7GB. I had used aprox 200GB out of the 500GB, so I was really upset. We opened up Terminal and began to type in commands, and, there it was! The folder with all of the Families Photos and Music etc, all there! After copying all the files over via the Schools Network, I now have all my family photos! Thats the only really thing I wanted off the drive, so just to have that was amazing! My parents are over joyed, and I think Im going to back up my photos more than once! Plus I need to buy a new External Hard Drive, to replace my Barracuda 7200.11! Even though the hard drive and firmware were apparently not affected by the BSY firmware bug, it still happened! Im just glad I have all my photos, so make sure you back up your data people! However, when your back up goes wrong, like mine, it's really not a good feeling. I guess I was one of the lucky ones, as well as having a super awesome IT Technician to help me! I apoligise for any spelling or grammar mistakes in this post. I don't know why I'm predicted an A when I am competely hopeless at English! Oh Well! There was just my story with the Barracuda 7200.11 drive! I hope everyone who is currently affected by the error gets their drive working and their data back! Thank You for an Amazing guide and fix!!

Hey Guys, I just found this forum, I really hope someone will be able to help me! So I have a Barracuda 7200.11 500gb HDD with Firmware SD81. The drive is not working, BIOS Crashes when booting. I have loads of data on that drive, it was my backup! How can I get the data off it? Should I update the Firmware, like suggested? Would this result in me losing my data or if I buy the same exact hard disk and replace the board, would that work! I REALLY WANT MY DATA! :L Family Pictures etc are at risk! Thanks Lewis!