The Solution for Seagate 7200.11 HDDs

[jaclaz]

The CA-42 cable is NOT the best choice in the world:

http://www.msfn.org/board/solution-seagate...756.html&s=

BUT read this:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?s=&amp...st&p=878793

and the referenced post:

http://www.msfn.org/board/solution-seagate...-page-1463.html

Some cables DO NOT install a virtual COM port, and you need to use Teraterm instead of Hyperterminal with some.

jaclaz

[science2002]

Thanks jaclaz for your reply. I am a bit confused.

1. I decided to buy (not cheaply) Nokia cable CA 42 after having see the informative video by nitrohelix (Thanks for that!), and because my laptop does not have Serial ports.

2. Now I read around (from two or three members) that there may be issues:

2.1 In case the cable is not Original -- this is not my case

2.2 In the case the cable si Original, but looks like the following (picture borrowed from Jhothagondyaz in his post here June 26:thanks) -- this is also my case

2.3 In case of using a laptop -- this is my case too.

I did not try the HD connection (just yet), because I would like to test that the Cable works in first instance, being the one with trouble 2.2. I learned that a loopback test is what I need.

As I said however I do not have any recognition that the cable after installing Nokia Setup.msi as described in the previous post of mine.

[[EDIT: Now I attached a battery of 3v to cable 1 and 5 and CA 42 is perfectly recognized by the laptop. Windows Devices shows an additional Modem as Nokia CA 42 USB Modem. I set up the hyperterminal connecting to the port (COM4) of the Nokia modem, I had first the impression that the loopback did not worked (I used also TeraTerm 3.13), because I did not see my typing retyped back. However I later understood that the loopback is just this: see what you typed on the keyboard.

/End EDIT]]

I did not understand if Jhothagondyaz was able to come out with a final solution, since he was with the same cable of mine (I send him a PM to ask this - no answer yet).

My questions are:

1) Is it a problem of power supply to the cable?

1.1) Do I need to use 3V batteries to pin 1 and 5 (Nokia mobile side of the cable), to make CA 42 detected?

[[EDIT: To these two questions the answer is YES if you have Cable 2.2 /End EDIT]]

2) After Cable detection, and with the presence of Nokia CA 42 USB Modem, how will be the settings for the hyperterminal (or TeraTerm 3.13 portable edition)?

[[EDIT: Just be sure to pick up the same port of Nokia USB Modem. The loopback does not mean that you see what you typed twice. You will see it just once /End EDIT]]

3) I guess that the batteries should stay there during the connection to the Seagate. Is this correct? If this is so do I need also to attach the GND (black cable) in addition to Rx and Tx, being the power of the CA 42 different from the power of the HD?

[[EDIT: I tried and both questions do have a YES answer /End EDIT]]

TIA for any help. [[EDIT: I hope the EDIT notes may be to some help to other members /End EDIT]]

Edited August 27, 2009 by science2002

[sloantbone]

***HELP**

Question is ......I have a IDE style 500 gig seagate that has the same problems as the version 11.

Mine is Barracuda 7200. 10St3500630A

Now here is what happened.

(History)

I had the drive partitioned a while back and I noticed that on one of the partitioned areas when I was viewing it using "windows explorer" that The drive letter avatar which normally showed a pic of a hard drive was absent and just showed something which was messed up.

Drive is about a year old, and suddenly quit on me and now I can't get the bios to see it on the PC>

I've tried it on a couple computers so I know that it just bricks up on any pc.

I want to see if I can fix it or get back my data.

Is that anyone that can explain to me if I can use the same method to reset them such as they talked about further above in this post.

Can which connections do i connect things to on the IDE drive.

Thanking anyone that helps me on this....i am really going to be stuck if I lose the data on this drive.

I am a photographer and it has about 400 gigs of raw images.

Gary

[breadbin]

***HELP**

Question is ......I have a IDE style 500 gig seagate that has the same problems as the version 11.

Mine is Barracuda 7200. 10St3500630A

Now here is what happened.

(History)

I had the drive partitioned a while back and I noticed that on one of the partitioned areas when I was viewing it using "windows explorer" that The drive letter avatar which normally showed a pic of a hard drive was absent and just showed something which was messed up.

Drive is about a year old, and suddenly quit on me and now I can't get the bios to see it on the PC>

I've tried it on a couple computers so I know that it just bricks up on any pc.

I want to see if I can fix it or get back my data.

Is that anyone that can explain to me if I can use the same method to reset them such as they talked about further above in this post.

Can which connections do i connect things to on the IDE drive.

Thanking anyone that helps me on this....i am really going to be stuck if I lose the data on this drive.

I am a photographer and it has about 400 gigs of raw images.

Gary

don't know if this thread will help you, its specifically to do with a busy error on some drives with a certain version of firmware. i have a drive too thats not recognised in the bios but even though its the same as these drives in here its a different problem to the "busy" error. i don't know how to determine it the drive is busy or not so try and find that out first. or see if there are other problems with your model on the net.

[GrimaceCX]

Gradius, you are my hero!! Seriously, I spent hours scouring the Net for a solution for my "dead" drive. I live in South Africa so any help from Seagate is out of the question.

I contacted the wholesaler where I purchased my 500Gb drive and was given the name of their company of choice - they offered to repair my drive for R5000.00 despite knowing that it was the SD15 error.

After your post and about R25.00 later, I got to work. After some 'dry' runs I got it together, 5 minutes later my drive was back in my PC and working 100%

Needless to say, I'm utterly STOKED.

So, again, thanks for going to all that trouble and sharing your knowledge with strangers. You saved me hours of labour and thousands of Rands

Edited August 28, 2009 by GrimaceCX

[Janooo]

...

it was adapter which have 21.8V without connection and when it is connected it is 18.5V. this numbers i get by measurement, but on this adapter it is Input 230V~50Hz 140mA Output 12V - 1A. Can you tell me how it is looking that diode, or how exactly i can fix it?

Thank you

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.

Hi,

I conect HDD like you say with com port to RS232 and RS232 to TTL(i use this circuit to conect phone and i don't have any problems there).But here i don't have any comunations with HDD though Hiper terminal or other programs which I use to connect with phones.I chek everything and its like you say.

Do you have any idea what my be the problem.

Thanks!

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.

hi i have checked if there is any shotcut but there isnt, i think i did it right.

I checked it when my hdd was out of enclosure its looks to be fine my enclosure is working fine, because i am using there 2 hdd they are working well.

Can you please tell me the next step, and sorry for my english.

Thank you

[MadOCer]

If the drive has no short circuit on the power connector than the drive itself either works or has other defetcs. That is all I can tell you from what you stated above.

[fer]

Hi. My drive's got the BSY problem, and I'm going to try the guide in the first post.

Do you think that this adapter would work? http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/391

Thanks

Edit: Maybe I should go for something like this instead? http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/126

Edited August 30, 2009 by fer

[isoxene]

[post removed] Ok, thanks, no help to be found here, Icelanders being very popular it seems they get no help

Edited September 4, 2009 by isoxene

[jaclaz]

Hi. My drive's got the BSY problem, and I'm going to try the guide in the first post.

Do you think that this adapter would work? http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/391

Thanks

Edit: Maybe I should go for something like this instead? http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/126

The first is a USB to TTL.

If you don't mind some work with the soldering iron, yes.

The second is a RS232 to TTL, actually successfully used by the maker of a "sister" guide:

http://www.msfn.org/board/solution-seagate...-page-1762.html

http://www.mapleleafmountain.com/seagatebrick.html

Being notoriously cheap, if I were US based I would use one of this (example) USB to TTL:

http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-To-TTL-Converter-M...id=p3286.c0.m14

You should check what you have as an option on e-bay, these ones seems nice too:

http://cgi.ebay.it/CP2102-USB-To-TTL-Conve...id=p3286.c0.m14

http://cgi.ebay.it/CP2102-USB-TTL-RS232-Se...id=p3286.c0.m14

or one of these, RS232 to TTL:

http://cgi.ebay.it/MAX232-RS232-Serial-to-...id=p3286.c0.m14

It all depends on what is best for your country, sometimes you can find better prices on e-bay than on local (or national internet) stores, sometimes it is the other way round).

Just for fun I would like to point out how this smart guy here:

http://cgi.ebay.it/INTERFACCIA-RS232-3V-TT...id=p3286.c0.m14

sells for €39+5,50 P&P=44.50

(including the "special" cable to connect to Seagates)

an interface remarkably similar to this one:

http://cgi.ebay.it/INTERFACCIA-RS232-TTL-3...34.c0.m14.l1262

which he sells for €15+2.50 P&P=17.50

In my book, it means that the difference betweeen this:

http://i21.ebayimg.com/01/i/000/97/24/62c5_1.JPG

and this:

http://i.ebayimg.com/07/!BSujW-wBGk~&a...jtLnJQ~~_12.JPG

i.e a cable, a CR2032 and it's holder+ the HD connector is valued €27.00

It is worth to mention this part:

http://cgi.ebay.it/INTERFACCIA-RS232-3V-TT...id=p3286.c0.m14

....

segnalo questi due link:

http://sites.google.com/site/seagatefix/

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=128807

.....

Questo prodotto e montato con componenti professionali.

il connettore lato HD e passo 2mm originale americano

questo e importante, altrimenti si rischia di perdere i dati sul HD

Bolded Italic part translating to:

The connector on the HD side is an original 2 mm pitch original american, this is important as otherwise there is a risk of losing the data on the HD

jaclaz

Edited August 30, 2009 by jaclaz

[Azkatro]

I can report another successful recovery of the LBA0 bug using the information in this brilliant forum.

I used a cheap, GENERIC Nokia CA-42 cable to do the job. More specifically, it was a board utilising the commonly found Prolific 2303 chipset. This particular version is the PL-2303HXA (Product Info). It came with a driver CD and cost me $1.25 AUD from a Chinese vendor based in Sydney (I am in Australia).

After getting it in the mail in a couple of days, I cut the Nokia plug end off and stripped the wires. I then managed to get the USB plastic covers off the other end to expose the board and reveal which wire was which. Unfortunately the only wire that was labeled on the board was the GND (Ground). There were four other wires and they were white, blue, green and orange. Other Nokia cables I'd seen had varying colours and numbers of wires.

Initially I had problems, I experimented with different wires in attempting a loopback test but had no luck. I set it up to use HyperTerminal, and when I hit connect nothing happened when I typed no matter what combination I tried. Still, I plowed ahead and tried communicating with the drive itself. In connecting just what I thought were the Tx and Rx wires to the drive pins (reversed of course), using the SATA power on the drive, I would get garbage coming into HyperTerminal until I connected the ground. Then if I turned it off and on again I would get the Rst 0x20M message. However, pressing Ctrl-Z had no effect no matter what I tried.

So I had a rest and came back wondering if this particular cheap, generic, made in China cable didn't draw its power from the USB port but from the phone instead. With that in mind, I opted for a solution which uses the 3.3V orange wire and ground from the SATA power plug and suddenly the loopback test worked. So I hooked it up to the HDD again, Ctrl-Z worked perfectly and the commands all went according to plan. Rebooted, data 100% recovered.

Here's my recipe in detail.

Firstly, the ingredients:

- One cheap generic Nokia CA-42 USB cable

LEGEND: Orange = 3.3V VCC, Black = GND, White = Rx, Blue = Tx, Green = ?????????? (remember this may vary!)

- Alligator clips

- A CD audio cable you can hack to pieces

- A knife or kitchen steak knife (or something else flat and sharp you can lever plastic tabs with)

Here is a summary of what I did:

1. Buy cheap generic Nokia CA-42 cable off Ebay for $1.25.

2. Cut off the Nokia plug, trim back the plastic shielding and strip the ends of each wire (so you can connect pins and/or alligator clips to the metal strands).

3. Remove the blue plastic covers on the USB end (which in my case were glued on so a bit tricky).

4. Plug the USB into your computer and setup the drivers if needed. In my case, both Windows XP Pro (32-bit and XP64/x64) didn't recognise the device (Prolific USB-to-Serial Comm Port) so I had to use the supplied CD.

5. Once it's installed successfully, press Windows Key+Pause or go Control Panel, System. Select Hardware and click Device Manager. I've noticed some people find the Nokia cable listed under Modem devices, but in my case it was listed under Ports (COM & LPT). Make a note of the COM number shown in brackets next to the device (eg Prolific USB-to-Serial Comm Port (COM9)).

6. Shut down your computer, and work out which SATA power lead you're going to use. I'm not sure if you can use this method with a Molex to SATA power adaptor, as some I've seen don't include the 3.3V wire (the orange one).

7. Look at the top of the SATA power plug and you should notice there are little black plastic tabs holding each wire in place. Make sure you have unplugged the mains power from the back of your computer, and use a knife or similar to carefully lift up the tabs for the orange wire and the black wire on the end next to it (that's GND). When you manage to lift the tabs the wires should just slide out harmlessly. I have a ThermalTake power supply so that might have helped, I'm not sure how tricky it could be with a cheap PSU.

8. Use the alligator clips to connect the orange SATA power wire (3.3V) to the orange wire on the cable, and the black SATA wire to the black one on the cable. The important thing here is to just make sure you connect the metal pins on the SATA plug wires to the metal strands you've exposed in the wires. This is far from the most correct way to do this electronically speaking but as long as you keep them separate and make sure the alligator clips are on firmly enough that they won't just slide off, it should be sufficient for this job.

9. Now take the CD audio cable and cut off one end. On the other end, lift the little plastic tabs (similar to the SATA plug) and slide out two of the wires. On the other end, strip back some plastic shielding in order to expose the metal strands, similar to how you would have with the Nokia cable.

10. Use the alligator clips to connect the white wire on the Nokia cable to the metal strand end of one of the wires from the CD audio cable, and the blue wire on the Nokia cable to the second wire you took from the CD audio cable.

11. What we're going to do is slide the pins we extracted from the CD audio plug into the hard drive Tx and Rx pins. However when you try this you will find it's extremely loose fitting. The way we can fix this is by flattening the holes at the end of the CD audio wire pins a bit. I used the handle of a kitchen steak knife to do it. Don't do it too far, we just want to turn it from being a round hole at the end to an oval shape (or whatever happens when you squash it down a bit) so we can still slide it over the HDD pins, but it's a much firmer fit. As other posts mention, the hard disk's Rx pin is closest to the SATA plugs - connect that to the Nokia cable's blue wire, and the Nokia cable's white wire goes into the hard disk's Tx pin, which is right beside the Rx. Once you've got the pins sliding in there snugly, make sure there's no slipping by giving them a bit of a wriggle test and make sure they're not touching (you can ever so gently bend the pins just slightly apart if need be).

12. Now our Nokia cable has power, it's connected to the HDD, and it's grounded. Leave everything else disconnected (HD power & data, USB device disconnected), make 100% sure none of the wires you've hooked up are touching, and turn the computer on.

13. Once you've finished booting, plug the USB device in and make sure it gets detected and everything. You can double check the COM port again to be safe here.

14. Load HyperTerminal (start, programs, accessories, communications).

15. Give the connection any old name.

16. Select the COM port pertaining to the USB device and click Configure.

17. Do the settings - Bits per second 38400, Data bits 8, Parity None, Stop bits 1, Flow control None. Click OK to confirm.

18. Click OK again to connect. You should get a blank screen. At this stage I actually found I could type and see the characters as I guess when you have the USB device powered and connected to the hard disk pins it acts as a loopback.

19. Now it's time to plug the SATA power into the hard drive. I think this may vary, but I just saw "Rst 0x20M" appear in HyperTerminal.

20. Once you see that, hold down the CTRL key and press Z. You should see the prompt:

F3 T>

21. Enter the command to regenerate the partition:

F3 T>m0,2,2,0,0,0,0,22 (enter)

22. Wait a couple of minutes or whatever (no message will appear until it's done). Eventually you get the message which ends with User Partition Format Successful - Elapsed Time x mins x secs. (I think mine was actually 0 seconds, but it still worked).

23. Now do the following to spin down the drive:

F3 T>/2 (enter)
F3 2>Z (enter)
Spin Down Complete
Elapsed Time x secs
F3 2>

24. Now you can unplug the drive's SATA power cable. Shut down the computer, unplug the USB device and unhook the little wires in the hard drive's Rx and Tx pins. Disconnect the SATA power plug's orange and black wires, and slide them back into the plug (did you remember which way around they went? the orange wire is on the end!) You will have to push the plastic tabs back down to lock them in again.

25. Plug SATA power and SATA data cables back in drive, boot machine.

You should now hopefully find your drive is detecting at the correct size and your data is there, as I did!

[lesigel]

I finally did get my usb adapter to work. I did require 5v of power instead of the 3v button battery. I ran into another set back. I followed the instructions for the power on/off. I never got the message at the end after of a minute waiting. Is my drive fubar now? Seagate drive detector detects it. I also updated the firmware, but I cant read from it. If it is dead than I am RMA'ing to seagate. Any responses would be great. Thanks

[slideman]

I have a ST31000333AS that suddenly died on me. I had not backed up the last few months of photographs and emails, so I was in big trouble with my wife for not backing it up.

After deadends at Seagate and no luck replacing the board by a working board from another ST31000333AS, I finally found this site.

I cannot thank you enough, Gradius2 and everyone else, for all of your hard work.

One note, if your disk does not come back right away, do not give up and do NOT turn it off.

I waited over 20 minutes for mine to complete, and it looks like all of the data is still there.

I have now copied it all over to a second disk. I am planning on wiping all of the data off of this disk and sending it back to Seagate for a replacement. I am less than confident about the disk since it took so long to come back, and since Seagate told me that I should send it in for a warranty replacement, I may as well.

Thanks again

Slideman

[jerry1091]

I'm having a bit of difficult with this fix. My drive is having the BSY issue.

I ordered the http://alldav.com/index.php?main_page=prod...;products_id=11 adapter

and this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16812101118 USB to DB9 Serial Adapter

I am using a 3v mobo bios battery and holder.

I connected everything up as per - http://sites.google.com/site/seagatefix/

and tested the loopback. everything worked as planed.

However if I connect the PCB board I sometimes get the same results as the loopback.

if I press crtl+Z I only get a right facing arrow ( -> )

Other times I get "com port open, check config"

is my PCB fried? I cannot image it is.

Thanks everyone for your help

[pink_ptr]

if conect motor spin this misage viw

ü

Rst 0x20M

(P) SATA Reset

PASSPackage Verified

No Phy: Staggered spin bypass

LED:000000CC FAddr:00287949

LED:000000CC FAddr:00287949ü

i cant type not work ctrl z

and not conect motor cant typy elp my plz