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Seagate 7200.11 problem...help!


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Well another fresh topic about the sadly old news...

My main issue here is that i need help into identifying my problem. I have a ST3500320AS with a SD15 firmware. I have only one partition on that disk and is a secondary drive, not os on it.

The problem started once i was using it under Win7 and suddenly when i tried to access a folder via win explorer and the navigation became **** too low, strange i though because it always worked great. After rebooting i was able to see the folder tree but no accessing any of the folder inside. After a 2nd reboot the disc was shown in "my pc" but without any normal info such as total space or free space avil that windows shows in a blue bar... also unaccessible, so i wasn't able to schedule chkdsk from windows to the next reboot. So I booted from win7 install dvd and chkdsk gave me back the msg "chkdsk doesn't support RAW drivers and cannot be read" (don't remember the exact msg but the idea is that the disk is in a RAW format).

After this and an increasing heart rate, i run HDD Regenerator and the first message i got from it was that the MBR need to be rebuild, but the program didn't do it, also i started a Prescan (which is fast) to get a general status and ALL sectors of the disk where found as bad ones. Then i run the Full Scan/Repair Scan and found again all those bad sectors, fixed none and also the remaining time counter said that it will take something like 6 years to finish...of course after 2 and a half hour i stopped as it founded in 3 gbs like 18k of bad sectors and none repaired.

Having in mind the MBR message i got from HDD Regenerator i run bootsect.exe utility from windows dvd in order to rebuild it but with absolutely no success. Having my head about to explode i investigated a little more about 7200.11 errors i found the big post in this forum (i read it all, yes it took a while) about LBA0 and BSY but in any part of the thread i found a real way to have a full diagnose of a LBA0 error.

While im waiting to have the necessary parts to perform the LBA0 fix i wanted to know if it really is that error that im having. I know that BSY error isn't my case because my hd is shown in the BIOS at all times, never disappeared, in some cases windows taked too long to boot with the drive plugin in but finally after a while i can see but non accessible. So it left me only with the possibility of the LBA 0 error (or electronic error) which as i said i cant diagnose because my BIOS doesn't show me the disk capacity in sectors in other words i can't see an "LBA 0" or "0Gbs" message anywhere (is there a way to check this with a tool or something just to be sure about it?), which it makes me doubt about if this is the case too.

I also run a test with Seatools for DOS and the drive doesn't pass the DST in the short test and with the long test founds a lot of bad sectors but as HDD Regenerator repaired none!

I also downloaded the SD1A firmware but i didn't updated it yet because im afraid to lock the this forever and if it really is the LBA 0 problem not being able to fix it with this firmware installed. But if LBA error is not my case, would a firmware update fix this ?

So well, the data inside that disk is extremely important to me and my biggest concern is not to know about what's wrong with this hd and if can save at least a part of the data inside. I don't care about loosing the drive in the process, i was also about to replace it for a bigger one anyway, but i mostly care about not loosing data. After reading a looot of great post here i found some answers but i never related exactly with my problem which it makes me a bad feeling about this. If someone can help me to find out what's happening with this HD would be really **** great.

Edited by nexus01
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The general idea is to ask for help BEFORE running ANY RANDOM software (that may have worsened the problems).

STOP fiddling with the disk until we have used PROPER diagnostic non-destructive tests on it.

Simply:

Get Hdhacker:

http://dimio.altervista.org/eng/

Check that it can see your drive (we are talking of \\.\PhydsicalDrive, \\.\PhysicalDrive0 should be your FIRST - i.e. BOOT drive, if the 7200.11 is second drive it will be PhysicalDrive1).

If yes, save first sector to a file.

Compress the file into a .zip archive.

Attach the .zip archive to your next post.

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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Thanks jaclaz for your reply!

I did unplug my other HDs and left my primary WD with the OS and the faulty 7200.11 plugged in.

i ran in Safe Mode (only way to run windows with that Seagate hd pluged because if i run normal mode, besides taking too long to book, once it log ins windows stays like "thinking" state hanged out trying to "install" this apparently unaccessible drive)

Once in Safe Mode i run Hdhacker but when i tried to read that disk i got "impossible to read sector on the disk" with any of the program options, so i don't know what else to do...

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Once in Safe Mode i run Hdhacker but when i tried to read that disk i got "impossible to read sector on the disk" with any of the program options, so i don't know what else to do...

Which translates in "drive can not be accessed".

Windows 7 is a "strange" platform, and may be part of the problem in accessing the drive's MBR, and safe mode is an additional possible variable.

The fact that "normal" Windows 7 refuses to mount the disk is another sign that disk is not accessible.

Ideally you should use an external USB enclosure (or el-cheapo adapter) and a "less" problematic (or let's say better known) "base OS", like 2K or XP.

However let's try another app.

MS's own tool DiskProbe:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=5354&st=8

But if the OS cannot mount the drive (not the partition or drive letter, but the actual \\.\PhysicalDrive ) it will get you nowhere.

You need good ol' DOS , try with MHDD, ideally disconnect your "main" hard disk from the PC:

http://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

mhdd has a rather complete documentation:

http://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/mhdd_manual.en.html

and an online command MAN help, but you ONLY want to run the commands:

ID

and

EID

and report their output, as well as the staus of the highlighted "flags" at the top.

You want to use this bootable CD image:

http://hddguru.com/download/software/mhdd/mhdd32ver4.6iso.zip

Please be VERY careful, take your time in understanding the above, if you have any doubt, ask about them BEFORE doing anything.

jaclaz

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Well as i have win7 dskprobe.exe isn't avil as default soft in the os so i tried with MDHH

I got a little trouble in the internal wiring of the hds (none was recognized by the tool) until i disconnect every disk (i have 4 but im using only 2 the main os drive and the failty one for test) and left only the 7200.11 as primary master (which isn't its regular connection) and boot from the cd you gave me. I tried to left at least one disk more besides the 7200.11 because i wanted to save the screenshot in a physical drive but i wasn't able because i ran the soft from the cd. Besides conecting it as primary master was the only way that MDHH recognized the HD as connected.

Once it was properly wired i got this results:

in the upper left side i got highlighted only these two DRSC and DRDY

After the EID command i got this as result:


ST3500320AS LBA: 976,773,168 BIOS:80H
SN: 5QM0ZWCX FW:SD15
Supports: LBA48 HPA DLMC LBA MSI6 DMA (UDMA6, MWDAMZ)
S.M.A.R.T: Enable SelfTest: Supported Errorlog: Supported
Security: high, Off Size: 476940 MB

hope this helps for something..

Edited by nexus01
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Wait a minute, aren't the 7200.11 all SATA?

There should be no such thing as Primary and Master and Slave on SATA. :unsure:

Anyway that result is good news :), MHDD can see and access the drive (which should mean that is not BSY or LBA0).

But it's also bad news as it could be something worse. :(

Try again with another drive connected, see if FAQ's help:

http://forum.hddguru.com/hdd-faq-t5.html

(Shift+F3)

Try running (take your time reading and make sure you know what you are doing) SCAN on a limited number of intial sectors, say 0 to 3000 and see if it can access them allright.

Then we'll try again from Windows.

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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My mistake, i choose the wrong words...yes all my HD are SATA2 . Last time was a program failure when it didn't recognized the HD on the first run, who knows why, now it works perfectly and reads all my hds.

Its kind of "sad" news for me that isn't LBA 0, i was wishing this wasn't something too complicated now im really worried about a real electrical or mechanical failure.

Anyway, i was able to perform a Smart Check and 2 different Scans (saved all in 1 log file) with MHDD.

The first scan was made under default parameters and with this range LBA scan: 0 to 3000 and all was ok, so i wen a little deeper and re-do the scan with a bigger range of LBA scan: 0 to 9999999 (less than 1% of the total LBAs) and lots of errors where found. MHDD marked them in the screen as purple " ! ".

I didn't perform any kind of fix, erase, relocation and/or any kind of WRITING into the disk with this soft.

Here i left you attached the LOG files of the Smart check and Scans.

Hope they help...

MHDD.zip

SMART.zip

Thanks again for all your help :)

Edited by nexus01
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OK.

Let's try again from Windows 7.

Have just the "boot disk drive" (the one you boot Windows 7 from) and the "failing/failed" one attached).

See if you can boot normally (or in safe mode).

Open Disk Management and describe how the 7200.11 is shown. (or post a screenshot).

Then open a command prompt and run diskpart in it.

The idea is that the MBR is locked by Windows 7 for whatever reason, see here:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=8200&st=39

or you can try using this:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=12413&hl=

(really cannot say if this is the issue at hand, it shouldn't be, but you never know)

Then, try running again HD hacker or get Tiny Hexer and try with it to open the \\.\PhysicalDrive corresponding to the 7200.11.

In Tiny Hexer you want to to save as new file Sector 0 of the disk.

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=8734

jaclaz

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what's your idea that i should run with that ?? i mean which command ?

The link I gave you explains the problems AND suggests the commands to be run, here it is again:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=8200&st=39

select disk 1
offline disk
attribute disk clear readonly
rescan
exit

The other link is about a GUI app that should do the same, here it is again:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=12413&hl=

jaclaz

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thanks again, anyway i moved on with that second option LockDismount.exe...

1) of all soon as i boot after a while windows showed me that message which says that he couldn't install the device...

post-310819-0-78927800-1291325518_thumb.

2) i succesfully open Disk Management under safe mode. Here is what it showed me after more than 10 min gathering the HDs info...

you can see there that the drive is in "correct" state and in File System says only RAW, also shows the drive partition size i used to have 465.75 GB meaning in some way that it can recognize some data of the old partition...i think..

post-310819-0-32120800-1291325423_thumb.

3) after i close Dsk Management i ran the LockDismount tool to Lock and dismount the drive, which it did successfully...it also took his time to open the soft, read the drives and perform the lock dismount operation, but not as much as dskmanagemt

post-310819-0-93653600-1291325802_thumb.

4) with the drive locked and unmounted i open the HD hacker but i got same result as last time :

post-310819-0-18562700-1291325864_thumb.

5) so then i was the turn of Tiny Hex which it gave this result after i tried to open the device in both ways (in the devices menu it shows the \\.\PhysicalDrive and \\.\PhysicalDrive (partition 1) which both resulted in same msg)

post-310819-0-27908200-1291326008_thumb.

System Error. Code:1117.
Request can't be done because of I/O device error

6) after all this errors i unlocked the drive successfully with LockDismount tool again just to left everything as it was...

so well again, i think this is another dead end :(

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It is possible that *something* in your current Windows install is the problem.

MHDD from pure DOS had no problem, almost anything under your current Windows 7 install does.

At this point you can either try on another machine, possibly running 2K or XP/2003, or prepare a "DOS based" set of tools/partition.

Actually all you need is some very little space in a FAT16 or FAT32 partition, possibly on a drive smaller than 137 Gb, or however with the partition entirely below this "barrier".

A good media would be a USB stick, we make it DOS bootable and install to it MHDD and a few other tools.

The "right" procedure would be to image that hard disk "as is" and work on a copy of the image, due to the size of the problematic hard disk it would be handy a 640 Gb surely working hard disk.

How familar are you with Linux Distro's?

We could try using one of them (with NTFS support) to at least gather the basic sectors, MBR, PBR, etc, and see what is in them (if actually readable).

If you try again MHDD, and try using it's TOF command saving to file sector LBA0÷LBA0 (which is the MBR) as, say, my_MBR.DAT it should save it allright, but it does so on the ramdisk.

So you need, while running MHDD to have another writable "permanent" drive to store the sector, or on reboot it will be gone.

jaclaz

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I think the nearest solution could be MHDD because at this time i don't have access to another bigger drive for at least a few days, other computer maybe but still a few days looking for it and taking it for testing for at least a day o two...Linux for me is not solution, never used it and never saw it how it works...i do use any MS OS and any MAC OS but not linux, ubuntu and any other os.

So here is what TOF command gave me back, hope is ok because MHDD gave a very very small file as result...

also i forgot to add .dat extension but i think it can be the same to add it later..

here is the file:

SEAGATEM.zip

Edited by nexus01
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So here is what TOF command gave me back, hope is ok because MHDD gave a very very small file as result...

also i forgot to add .dat extension but i think it can be the same to add it later..

Sure. It's the "right" file, 512 bytes in size, i.e. 1st sector or LBA 0: the MBR

The .DAT is only a mnemonic, no need for it..

Now, open the file in Tiny Hexer a and have a look at it with my MBRview and PTView Structure viewers.

The bad news :( are that it is a partially cleared MBR, the good news :) are that the 00ed part is just the MBR code, and the partition table entry is seemingly entirely there.

The CHS and LBA are OK.

The only partition entrry is about a single, primary partition, NTFS, extending 976,768,002 sectors, i.e. 976,768,002x512=500,105,217,024 which sounds just about the right size.

The disk was apparently partitioned under either 2K/XP/2003 or with an utility that respects Cylinder boundaries (by default Vista :ph34r: and 7 do align on cluster size).

From the MHDD LOG, the disk has 976,773,168 sectors in total.

Aligning to cylinder boundary, the end LBA (in our case 63+976,768,002=976,768,065) must satisfy equation n x 255 x 63 = 976,768,065 which it does with n = 60,801

Now you need to run TOF again and get:

  1. the bootsector, i.e. LBA 63÷63 (but since you seem to be able to get the result of TOF without problems, do run TOF on LBA 0÷2999 that should give a resulting file 1,536,000 bytes in size and that may contain some more info that can be useful)
  2. the bootsector copy, which should be at LBA 976,768,065, for the same reasons above, please do a TOF on LBA 976768000÷976773167 which should give you a file 2,646,016 bytes in size

If the partition start in the MBR was changed, it is likely that the "old" one was created under an unpatched Vista :ph34r: or 7 and in that case it would likely start at LBA 2048.

Don't be afraid of the size of the files, once zipped - since they should be mostly 00's - they should result in a smallish archive.

If it doesn't fit within the board limitations for attachments, instead of attaching you may want to upload the .zip to a free hosting site and post a link to it.

I hope you can follow the above line of reasoning/arithmetics, if you need to ask questions, please do.

The general idea is, now that we know that some data exists in the MBR, we try to verify if that data actually points to a partition bootsector or not, and hopefully if the "real" bootsector has been wiped or damaged, it's copy is still valid.

With the data in the bootsector we can then check the "main" structure of the NTFS, the $MFT.

Once we manage to understand what problems are there in these areas we will try to fix them, either manually or by attempting using TESTDISK on the disk.

Since you cannot - for any reason - acces the disk from Windows, you could in the meantime download the UBCD:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

and burn a bootable CD out of it.

UBCD contains TESTDISK inside the nice pmagic Linux distro. (in the UBCD Menu choose HDD->Data Recovery -> Testdisk ....) but also a number of other tools that may come handy.

(you don't need to know Linux to use it, it is just the underlying (graphical) OS to run the command line TESTDISK.)

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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got it! i will try to recover this files in a few days, i had to do a short business trip and i'll be back to home in wednesday next week to work this out...:)

in the meantime i will try to figure out how to save these new files i have to export to bring them back here... the last one i did copy it into a floppy, but these new files are bigger than 1.44mb so its kind of difficult for me to copy them to a hard drive or an usb stick without zip them because i cant figure out how can i get any drive besides the C: A: and B: recognized by the DOS mounted in the RamDrive, even if i have other hds connected...

Edited by nexus01
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