Chrissygoe

Some additional (firmware-update) information about my HDD with the spin-up-spin-down error: Of course I started to update the firmware of this HDD after backing up the data. The label on the disc tells me: "Firmware: SD35". Before I started the update I installed and used SeaTools (after unbricking, checking the bricked HDD was not possible of course) - the result was: "Firmware: SD3A". So there is a difference between the information on der HDD's sticker and the output from SeaTools. However I started the firmware update. The P/N models mentioned in the update programm did not fit perfectly to my HDD, so I guessed nothing good... And as exspected the update process aborted with an error message: NO MATCH WILL NOT DOWNLOAD FIRMWARE SPECIFIC MODEL NOT FOUND. ST31000333AS EXPECTED [<-- I do HAVE this one...] The HDD is from a Maxtor Basics Desktop external drive. On the internet I did not find very much information about the firmware SD3A... Do I still have to try a firmware update...? Greets Chris

The description of the "BSY error" in this thread should be expanded: The "BSY error" seems to occur also as this special phenomenon: The HDD spins up, then spins down, spins up, spins down... and so on... [sOLVED!] Here is my story: I'm probably one of the Seagate-Barracuda-bricking-victims (ST31000333AS, Firmware: SD35). I have found lots of information about this (old) problem for example in this thread, but the funny description under http://www.mapleleafmountain.com/seagatebrick.html made me smile a little bit in these sad hours. But I had one big problem: I was not completly sure, if the problem with my hard drive ist caused by the "bsy-state-error" that can be solved as described in this thread. The problem with my hard disk, that is from an external drive, was: It began to spin up, klicked in the normal way and when it reached the top rotation speed it turned off again. But only for about one second. Long before it stoped rotating the hard drive awoke to life again and spun up. At top speed it turned off again, spun down, then awakes again, spun up and so on... The hard drive was not detected by the BIOS or any other device manager. This behaviour occured while connected directly to the motherboard and with several different docking stations. The problems with the seagate hard drives are usually described as follows: - "0 LBA error: it happens when your BIOS can recognize your HDD at POST moment, but as an 0MB drive." (definitely not my problem) - "BSY error: it happens when your HDD enter on a halt state, or Busy state. In this condition, your HDD will not be recognized by BIOS at POST moment." (perhaps that was my problem) In the beginning I was not sure, whether this described the problem I had. But some (few) special posts on the internet described exactely the problem I had. Examples: http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Barracuda-XT-Barracuda-Barracuda/Need-Help-ST31000333AS-Barracuda-7200-11-Drive-Clicking-amp-Not/td-p/34012 http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Barracuda-XT-Barracuda-Barracuda/SOLVED-BSY-fix-Barracuda-7200-11-ST310002333AS-SD35-Is-it-a/td-p/54090 Also these guys used the unbricking-technique successfully, but you can find only very few details... So I decided to give it a try. The needed items were orderd and today the virtual surgery on the open HDD-heart began. First I had some problems to get in contact with the RS232-to-TTL-adaptor (no idea what went wrong), but finally it worked. It took me two attempts to communicate with the HDD (also no idea about the mistake - JUST RE-TRY!!!). During the first one I received some "Rst 0x20M"-errors but the second attempt worked properly as described in this thread. Just a hint: At the end, after the command "m0,2,2,0,0,0,0,22" I had to be patient. It took several minutes until I received the happy message "User Partition Format Successful". My HDD is working again, no data is lost, an the backup is running right now. The new firmware ist waiting to be loaded... So I send many (happy!) greetings from rainy Germany Chris