blinkdt

OK, I just ran into my second Seagate drive suffering this issue. In the first instance, the owner contacted a "seller" on eBay who unbricked the drive for a mere $80. Uh-huh. Little did we know . . . . In this case, I went to Seagate's site, wrote down the toll free support number (1-800-732-4283) and gave them a call. I spoke briefly with customer service and they sent me to tech support where 'Karen' explained the issue to me (they sent out a batch of drives with test firmware) before offering to have me ship the drive to them at their expense. They would perform a force firmware update that would unbrick the drive and make the data accessible, or replace the drive outright. I told them I did not need the data and opted for choice three, the advance replacement at $20. I should receive my new drive in three days and will return the old drive using a pre-paid shipper. I could have done the whole thing for free, but life is short and then you die. Bottom line: sounds to me like Seagate has their act together at this point and could not have been more accommodating, at least in my case. Give them a call. Edit: by the way, Karen and her colleagues are based in Oklahoma and sound real purdy .

Your method appears sound, but try it in reverse: set up the pop3 account first, let the messages/custom folders, etc. download fully from the server, then close Outlook and restore (overwrite) the existing .pst file from your backup. You might lose new messages, however. And heaven help you if you forget to restore the .NK2 file . . . many users rely upon it as their address book.