[corkyblue]

BlouBul, on 26 March 2011 - 12:14 PM, said:

corkyblue, on 26 March 2011 - 11:29 AM, said:

the latest strange development is that its showing no firware revision in seatools now..... the ZZ7L has disappeared?? not allowing any tests either!!

First tell us exactly what you committed with your hdd during the attempted fix. The more detailed info you give, the better the chance that we can understand what went wrong.

ok, here goes..

well having received the drive back from the 'free diagnosis' form the data recoverer, i connected the drive back to my PC as an internal and discovered that it spins up, although did not show in BIOS. it was identified through disk management but was 'unknown' and needed initializing.

now, my freind /neighbour is more technical than I am so we have all the cables and adaptor (inclusive of nokia modified cable) ready to attempt the BSY fix, or at least try and get something through hyperterminal as a first thing.

as a first attempt, we were not succesful in getting the HDD to power up, which could be a result in the fact it wasnt talking to our independant PSU???, which was being used from its red cable molex only, in orer to power it up...... he suggested we take a look again to see if the drive was appearing through BIOS, but on HIS pc instead of mine..... it was. however it was showing only a total of 7.87GB and of course the firmware as previously stated as ZZ7L.

This drive should be a total of 640GB and has near 423GB of my data on it!

(i'd like to point out again that the HDD had a firmware of SD33 Prior to its 'free diagnosis' ... they changed it during the week they had the drive...they also said that it WASN'T the BSY fix and that they quouted £300 to get my data back. )

here is what the recoverer has actually said:

'Your drive has multiple failures. It would appear that media issues have caused a firmware lockout, so one problem would have to be resolved before fixing the next one.'

during the session at my friends, we connected the drive using the RX and TX, and tried to check that we were getting the right connections. my freind set up hyperterminal and checked that this matched...however, the actual drive would not spin up.

My freind then suggested we just get the firmware update on the drive, and downloaded the 'Brinks' SD1 something or other firmware, however...he nearly messed his own PC up by this... so aborted.

I am now at home again and connected the drive to my PC, to have another look through Seatools...its firmware is now displaying nothing...blank. which makes me think did he actually wipe off the ZZ7L Firmware? is that possible?

looking forward to your feedback, i'll answer further questions as simply as i can.

Corky

[BlouBul]

Did you get any response from hyperterminal when you tried to fix it. Check the three links given earlier for help (FGA, Read-me-first, and guide by CarterinCanada).

Not sure what is exactly wrong, but you can't update the firmware on a bricked drive - you have to first do the whole procedure correctly before updating.

Just try everything again carefully. and report what goes wrong (or attach log file from hyperterminal)

[corkyblue]

ok latest is I've just looked for my drive in AIDA64......Heres what comes up.

remember my drive is a 640GB Capacity drive.

hopefully this listed info helps a little more to understand my case.


ATA Device Properties

Model ID : ST3640323AS

Serial Number : 9VK0CE3H

Revision : ZZ7L

Device Type : SATA-II @ JMicron

Parameters : 16383 cylinders,16 heads, 63 sectors per track, 512 bytes per sector

LBA Sectors : 0

Buffer : Unknown

Multiple Sectors : 16

ECC Bytes : 4

Unformatted Capacity : 8064 MB

ATA Standard : ATA8-ACS

[BlouBul]

OK corkyblue,

Just try for once to answer specific questions. Each time I ask you a question, you come back with an answer for a different question
I am still trying to understand how far you came with the fix and what happen there, what error commands you got if any and if you actually had communication with your hdd through hyperterminal.
Please, just FIRST answer those questions and then we can look at the rest.

This post has been edited by BlouBul: 27 March 2011 - 12:32 AM

[corkyblue]

BlouBul, on 27 March 2011 - 12:25 AM, said:

OK corkyblue,

Just try for once to answer specific questions. Each time I ask you a question, you come back with an answer for a different question
I am still trying to understand how far you came with the fix and what happen there, what error commands you got if any and if you actually had communication with your hdd through hyperterminal.
Please, just FIRST answer those questions and then we can look at the rest.

ok just spent several hours trying, but no comms between hdd and hyperterminal. checked the RX/TX leads, swapped and tried checked the loopback which seemed to report ok...but nothing.

tried covering the motor with piece of card, followed the instructions...but nothing doing...any suggestions?
for the record, i am 'seeig' the drive in disk management...but no data or any capacity.

[BlouBul]

corkyblue, on 27 March 2011 - 08:46 AM, said:

ok just spent several hours trying, but no comms between hdd and hyperterminal. checked the RX/TX leads, swapped and tried checked the loopback which seemed to report ok...but nothing.

tried covering the motor with piece of card, followed the instructions...but nothing doing...any suggestions?
for the record, i am 'seeig' the drive in disk management...but no data or any capacity.

A couple more questions (try to answer them all)

1.So your loopback was successful?

2. What kind of converter did you use? Is it powered at 3.3V or 5V?

3. Did you put SATA power on your hdd?

4. Is it now seen in BIOS?

5. Did you have comms with your hdd before?

This post has been edited by BlouBul: 27 March 2011 - 09:08 AM

[corkyblue]

BlouBul, on 27 March 2011 - 09:07 AM, said:

corkyblue, on 27 March 2011 - 08:46 AM, said:

ok just spent several hours trying, but no comms between hdd and hyperterminal. checked the RX/TX leads, swapped and tried checked the loopback which seemed to report ok...but nothing.

tried covering the motor with piece of card, followed the instructions...but nothing doing...any suggestions?
for the record, i am 'seeig' the drive in disk management...but no data or any capacity.

A couple more questions (try to answer them all)

1.So your loopback was successful?

2. What kind of converter did you use? Is it powered at 3.3V or 5V?

3. Did you put SATA power on your hdd?

4. Is it now seen in BIOS?

5. Did you have comms with your hdd before?

1. loopback seemed to have success as the converter displays LED lights and also on hyperterminal as we typed it showed up as per the carterincanada explanation

2. convertor 3.3 powered from molex from PC PSU

3. SATA power on HDD yes...but not spinning up

4. yes seen in bios on freinds pc (his is XP) not on mine (mine is vista)

5. i dont think i had comms before (in what way do you mean) (through hyperterminal?)

[BlouBul]

corkyblue, on 27 March 2011 - 09:38 AM, said:

1. loopback seemed to have success as the converter displays LED lights and also on hyperterminal as we typed it showed up as per the carterincanada explanation

2. convertor 3.3 powered from molex from PC PSU

3. SATA power on HDD yes...but not spinning up

4. yes seen in bios on freinds pc (his is XP) not on mine (mine is vista)

5. i dont think i had comms before (in what way do you mean) (through hyperterminal?)

Thanks
Now I have a better idea of what is going on. I was not sure if you did half a fix before and that was the reason for the strange things.

That said, there are a couple of strange things that I am not sure about. Let us do it one at a time.
The first one is that it is seen on your friends pc in BIOS and not on yours. One possibility is that your sata power cable is damaged (that would also explain why your converter is not seen by your hdd) Check all cables and connections thoroughly (use different cables if you can).

[corkyblue]

BlouBul, on 27 March 2011 - 10:09 AM, said:

corkyblue, on 27 March 2011 - 09:38 AM, said:

1. loopback seemed to have success as the converter displays LED lights and also on hyperterminal as we typed it showed up as per the carterincanada explanation

2. convertor 3.3 powered from molex from PC PSU

3. SATA power on HDD yes...but not spinning up

4. yes seen in bios on freinds pc (his is XP) not on mine (mine is vista)

5. i dont think i had comms before (in what way do you mean) (through hyperterminal?)

Thanks
Now I have a better idea of what is going on. I was not sure if you did half a fix before and that was the reason for the strange things.

That said, there are a couple of strange things that I am not sure about. Let us do it one at a time.
The first one is that it is seen on your friends pc in BIOS and not on yours. One possibility is that your sata power cable is damaged (that would also explain why your converter is not seen by your hdd) Check all cables and connections thoroughly (use different cables if you can).

i can try the drive via usb enclosure if thats worthwhile too?

[BlouBul]

corkyblue, on 27 March 2011 - 12:13 PM, said:

i can try the drive via usb enclosure if thats worthwhile too?

Yes, see what happens

[corkyblue]

BlouBul, on 27 March 2011 - 12:17 PM, said:

corkyblue, on 27 March 2011 - 12:13 PM, said:

i can try the drive via usb enclosure if thats worthwhile too?

Yes, see what happens

ok the drive is being seen in disk management, (not in my computer) its info is below, if it helps at all:

ATA Device Properties

Model ID : ST3640323AS

Serial Number : 9VK0CE3H

Revision : ZZ7L

Device Type : SATA-II @ JMicron

Parameters : 16383 cylinders,16 heads, 63 sectors per track, 512 bytes per sector

LBA Sectors : 0

Buffer : Unknown

Multiple Sectors : 16

ECC Bytes : 4

Unformatted Capacity : 8064 MB

ATA Standard : ATA8-ACS

[BlouBul]

Just remember you are using a CA-42

corkyblue, on 09 March 2011 - 05:07 AM, said:

ok well i've now received some of the things necessary to carry out the procedure...i seem to have a problem though with the Nokia Data Cable

basically i bought this one:

http://www.uk-mobile...DATA-CABLE.html

corkyblue, on 27 March 2011 - 09:38 AM, said:

2. convertor 3.3 powered from molex from PC PSU

Nokia converters normally do not need to be powered, try without powering the converter (see if loopback works)

corkyblue, on 27 March 2011 - 12:34 PM, said:

ok the drive is being seen in disk management, (not in my computer) its info is below, if it helps at all:

ATA Device Properties

Model ID : ST3640323AS

Serial Number : 9VK0CE3H

Revision : ZZ7L

Device Type : SATA-II @ JMicron

Parameters : 16383 cylinders,16 heads, 63 sectors per track, 512 bytes per sector

LBA Sectors : 0

Buffer : Unknown

Multiple Sectors : 16

ECC Bytes : 4

Unformatted Capacity : 8064 MB

ATA Standard : ATA8-ACS

Not sure about it being seen in Disk management (or in your friends bios), might not be BSY.
Try the procedure once more without powering the converter, and if the same, let's wait to see what jaclaz says (might be something else).

[corkyblue]

BlouBul, on 27 March 2011 - 01:02 PM, said:

Just remember you are using a CA-42

corkyblue, on 09 March 2011 - 05:07 AM, said:

ok well i've now received some of the things necessary to carry out the procedure...i seem to have a problem though with the Nokia Data Cable

basically i bought this one:

http://www.uk-mobile...DATA-CABLE.html

corkyblue, on 27 March 2011 - 09:38 AM, said:

2. convertor 3.3 powered from molex from PC PSU

Nokia converters normally do not need to be powered, try without powering the converter (see if loopback works)

corkyblue, on 27 March 2011 - 12:34 PM, said:

ok the drive is being seen in disk management, (not in my computer) its info is below, if it helps at all:

ATA Device Properties

Model ID : ST3640323AS

Serial Number : 9VK0CE3H

Revision : ZZ7L

Device Type : SATA-II @ JMicron

Parameters : 16383 cylinders,16 heads, 63 sectors per track, 512 bytes per sector

LBA Sectors : 0

Buffer : Unknown

Multiple Sectors : 16

ECC Bytes : 4

Unformatted Capacity : 8064 MB

ATA Standard : ATA8-ACS

Not sure about it being seen in Disk management (or in your friends bios), might not be BSY.
Try the procedure once more without powering the converter, and if the same, let's wait to see what jaclaz says (might be something else).

Yes the CA-42 cable is the mystery part for me (and i know it shouldn't be) my freind said thtat this cable comes into play later in the procedure...in other words when we get the data back...but i couldnt understand quite how it comes into the set-up...i know i sound a doofus

[jaclaz]

BlouBul, on 27 March 2011 - 01:02 PM, said:

Nokia converters normally do not need to be powered, try without powering the converter (see if loopback works)

BlouBul, on 27 March 2011 - 01:02 PM, said:

Not sure about it being seen in Disk management (or in your friends bios), might not be BSY.
Try the procedure once more without powering the converter, and if the same, let's wait to see what jaclaz says (might be something else).

I don't think anyone will like what jaclaz may say.

jaclaz has the impression of looking at a bunch of headless chickens running around.

corkyblue (with very little of due respect ) seems like been panicking, which is EXACTLY what is not advised.
His friend seems like being EITHER well beyond "our" level of knowledge OR a completely unexperienced n00b pretending to be an expert.
NEITHER seems like having read (or understood) the main parts (let alone the trivial ones) of the FGA and of the read-me-first.

Bloubul, this time with ALL due respect , seems like having forgotten (hint,hint) how Nokia hacking literature actually recommends having the phone battery FULLY charged before attempting anything with those phones.

All in all, jaclaz has very little to say as the amount of confusing, probably misleading and definitely partially incorrect info corkyblue posted is simply overwhelming.
@ corkyblue
This reply makes NO sense:

Quote

4. yes seen in bios on freinds pc (his is XP) not on mine (mine is vista)

The BIOS "comes into play WELL BEFORE *any* OS.
It DOES NOT matter which OS you have installed on your PC, a disk drive is EITHER seen in BIOS or it is NOT.
Known possibilities are:

• no detection from BIOS (i.e. being NOT accessible because constantly in BSY state)
  
• having 0 capacity (LBA0)
  
• having a "random" capacity (different from it's real one)

Basically, posting on this thread ONLY makes sense IF you are in condition #1 OR #2 above, you seem like being in condition #3 or a "strange" mix between #1 and #3 .

The firmware "ZZ7L" DOES NOT exist (AFAIK).

As I see it there are two possibilities, the problem on your hard disk is seemingly outside the scope of this thread and beyond "our" knowledge and EITHER:

• it really had this "unknown" problem
  
• this problem was caused (intentionally or by mistake) by the recovery company

Now, maybe we can try and help, BUT you need to start trying to cooperate by:

• replying to questions EXACTLY
  
• provide EXACT descriptions of what you are doing/you did
  
• AVOID going off on a tangent ( I do challenge you to find ANYWHERE on this thread suggesting AIDA as a test method)

Let's start again from scratch, OK?

FORGET about the drive, just do a loopback test on the adapter (Binary, it either works or it does not).
Try powering it "with molex" and WITHOUT powering it, you should "see" the difference.
Report.

jaclaz

This post has been edited by jaclaz: 27 March 2011 - 05:38 PM

[Chilli]

BlouBul, on 24 March 2011 - 01:10 PM, said:

Did you look here? http://support.seaga...e_check_en.html

Thanks for the link, I'll look at it when I'm at home. As I said I gave up searching. So maybe I can sell the drive for some bugs or use it as back up drive if I can update the firmware.

I don't want to argue with you about the difference of a minimum timespan and an average, it will lead to nowhere ;-).
I think I stumbled somewhere about an explanation that there are more than one failure mode of the harddrive caused by the SW (eg. there was a Segate ICT or EOL test pattern dependend issue and some other stuff). Based on my usage (the PC is not booted daily) and the short (almost every time decreasing) MTTF of my drive I would say the normal counter overflow theory is no explanation for the failure of my drive. The drive is what some called "locked in", that means I have to power up with heads & motor attached and than quickliy unattach the heads after first reponse from the drive on the serial line. -Maybe this makes a difference.
Still instead of using some plastic cards, I first loosen all PCB screws (to avoid bending/stress on PCB) and than quickly unscrew the screw above the head connector at the right time.
But I also won't argue if it is more likely to damage the PCB with a plastic card or to damage the heads because of paritial head connector contact during too slow screwing ;-). -Can just say my drive survived the proceduer, and also survived 5V TTL (thanks to the serial reaistors in the serial line on HDD PCB)..

Regards
Chilli

[BlouBul]

jaclaz, on 27 March 2011 - 05:36 PM, said:

I don't think anyone will like what jaclaz may say.

jaclaz has the impression of looking at a bunch of headless chickens running around.

All in all, jaclaz has very little to say as the amount of confusing, probably misleading and definitely partially incorrect info corkyblue posted is simply overwhelming.

Yes, I suspected he might say something like that (actually, I expected worse ) Thanks for the reality check

jaclaz, on 27 March 2011 - 05:36 PM, said:

The firmware "ZZ7L" DOES NOT exist (AFAIK).

From what I could gather, the firmware shown as 77ZL could be because of an incorrect attempt at unbricking That is why I tried to understood what exactly happened during the first attempted fix, but since there was apparently no comms with the hdd during that, it was probably done by the data recovery "experts"

Apparently it can be forced flashed to a later version after the fix.

BlouBul, on 26 March 2011 - 04:12 AM, said:

Funny firmware version is not a major issue and can be flashed to SD1A/B after the fix.
http://www.msfn.org/...ndpost&p=892154

corkyblue, on 27 March 2011 - 04:00 PM, said:

Yes the CA-42 cable is the mystery part for me (and i know it shouldn't be) my freind said thtat this cable comes into play later in the procedure...in other words when we get the data back...but i couldnt understand quite how it comes into the set-up...i know i sound a doofus

That is where the problem lies. The way understand your situation, you got a converter that didn't work originally (although you do seem to have loopback now with that converter) and replaced it with a Nokia CA-42 data cable (but forgot to replace it and are still using the original converter).

[jaclaz]

Chilli, on 27 March 2011 - 11:49 PM, said:

Based on my usage (the PC is not booted daily) and the short (almost every time decreasing) MTTF of my drive I would say the normal counter overflow theory is no explanation for the failure of my drive.

Yep, and this means that it is affected by *something else*, and obviously the "next failure prediction" deriving from issue A cannot be taken into account at all because the drive fails earlier than expected because of issue B.
In other words we have a theory that may (or may not) apply to a given problem but that SURELY won't apply to ANOTHER problem.

jaclaz

[corkyblue]

Corkyblue. update and report concerning St3640232as hard drive and attempted repair..


current : since the drive returned from the data recovery firm.

1) plugged rs232 converter via serial to usb converter to pc. fixed rx to tx in a non powered loop - entered hyper terminal. nothing happened
2) plugged rs232 converter via serial to usb converter to pc. fixed rx to tx in a powered loop (from pc) - entered hyper terminal, typed Ctrl Z - no pointer appeared but the green

(rx) light flickered. no red (tx) light and no responce in hyperterminal - this is why we're not too sure if the communication worked.
3) took the loop out and fixed the tx cable (yellow) to the rx pin on the hd. added a rx cable (red) and plugged that into the tx pin of hd (as per carterincanada's diagram) and

added sata power to drive. also added the cardboard to insulate the motor from the circuit board. The red light (tx on rs232) shone the moment the power went on. this worried

us. turned off. rechecked leads. everything looked right. powered up - red light continued. tried hyperterminal - no change.
4 thinking that the two cables (tx and rx) were inverted we swapped them around. this time no red light and when using hyperterminal the green light flickered each time a key

was pressed but wouldn't accept ctrl z or any text.
5) signed and had a cup of tea. this is were we leave the repair script and double checked the basics.
6) powered down. removed card, tightened hex screws. removed rs232 leads. fitted hd into pc - not the orignal host pc. added data and power cables. booted up. the drive

appeared in the bios as : st3640323as - it's proper name. after a longer than usual windows (xp pro) boot up. windows claimed to have found new hardware, a disk drive. after a

few more minutes it updated it's information to say it had found ST3640232as. it didn't appear in my computer - not all that surprised. checked disk management and it didn't

show there. powered down.
7) returned hd to original host pc. hd not found in bios. after window boot up (vista), pc claimed again to find new hardware, gave the drive name st3640232as. nothing appeared

in "my computer" but in disk management the drive was there as an 'unknown' disk, 'not initialised' and it's capacity was zero. didn't ititialise it.
8) the drive itself spin up as any other drive would - no ticks, no spindowns but no sound of anything being accessed.
9) that was our week end.
10) haven't used nokia cable at all yet.


And yep noob and doofus are quite apt for us.

[BlouBul]

corkyblue, on 28 March 2011 - 10:26 AM, said:

1) plugged rs232 converter via serial to usb converter to pc. fixed rx to tx in a non powered loop - entered hyper terminal. nothing happened
2) plugged rs232 converter via serial to usb converter to pc. fixed rx to tx in a powered loop (from pc) - entered hyper terminal, typed Ctrl Z - no pointer appeared but the green

Which com port did you choose in HyperTerminal? Make sure it matches the Port in Device Manager (if there are a port next to your converter cable)

Also see FGA #4 and 5 just for good measure

FGA said:

4. Ctrl Z doesn't work...
Did you do a Loopback test? (See Read-Me-First Point #8)

A Loopback test will tell you if your converter can talk to itself. You can't expect your converter to talk to your HDD if it cannot talk to itself. A successful Loopback test will show you that you have a working converter that is set up correctly and you have correctly identified the Rx and Tx wires (they might be the wrong way around, but that is not critical at this stage)

After a successful Loopback test, you can connect your converter to your HDD. If you still do not get a signal after Ctrl-Z, try switching Tx and Rx around. Make sure your HDD is powered. Make sure your PCB is not connected by isolating either the Motor or Head contacts. Also make sure you have a 3.3V converter and NOTa 5V converter (Read-Me-First Point #10). Check grounding (Read-Me-First Point #7).

5. My Loopback test failed. What is wrong?
Make sure you have the right driver installed. Is your converter seen as a port in your Device Manager and HyperTerminal? Make sure you have correctly identified the Rx and Tx wires. Does your converter need to be powered? Did you set up your HyperTerminal session correctly? If all that fails, your converter might not be working.

In other words, first get your loopback sorted out before you connect it to your hdd.

This post has been edited by BlouBul: 28 March 2011 - 11:30 AM

[r3nni32000]

Hi everyone,
iam in a spot of bother, i have read loads of this topic and iam trying to fix barracuda 7200.11 with the bsy fix,
firstly what iam using is a ca42 made in china IL4008321 5 wire, white and blue tx rx , black ground, 3 1.2v batteries wired to orange and gnd black from ca42, separate sata power supply.
i think i did a loop back test ( i connected blue and white together and got type in the hyper terminal)
My problem is when i powered on the hard drive it stopped so i then plugged in the ca42 usb and got a blue screen it said ser2pl.sys dumping physical memory,
PLEASE could someone help me see what iam doing wrong, i would be greatful. cheers in advance.