vandermerwe

Help me please I have a 2 year old Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 HD, that for no apparent reason stopped working yesterday. This was my main drive, and no, I do not have backups (shame on me). The details of the drive: ST 31500341AS, firmware CC1H. The drive is seen intermittently by the BIOS - and when it is seen, the size is reported as 0 Mb, prompting me to consider the LBA 0 bug. I have tried the following: 1. I have changed the data cable and the power cable, without any obvious change in behaviour. 2. Seatools for DOS - short and long DST. Both tests giving me the error that the drive is not responding to commands. 3. I have constructed a TTL cable using a USB to TTL converted (checked the driver, looks like it is using a FTDI IC). 3.1. I performed a loop back test on the cable, confirming that it works. 3.2. I have checked the baud rate, parity and stop bits, flow control and confirmed to be correct 3.3. I have connected the RX to the drive's TX, and the TX to the drive's RX, and the other way around. I connected the GND of the cable to the GND of the drive. 3.4. I am using windows 7, with an XP version of hyperterminal. 3.5. The drive is powered up 3.6. The PCB is isolated (I know this is not part of the solution of the LBA 0 bug, but seeing that the drive is intermittently seen by the BIOS, I did consider the BSY bug as well.) 3.7. I have confirmed the voltages between the RX and GND pins as well as the TX and the GND pins - both reading 3.4 V None of the combinations under 3 seem to be able to communicate with the drive. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.