Got this drive as part of a faulty lot that I am trying to bring to life anyway I can. No data on drive, just wanna get it working somehow.

The drive is a 98K036 - 505 That will not format no matter what I do. The drive is recognized in BIOS, the computer will read its identification and it will show up in the system properties. But when I go to partition, it will crash or not even start.

It could be a bunch of bad clusters in the system area or I am hoping its a pcb issue somewhere. I think the heads are okay as SMART (No bad SMART data, looks okay) data can be easily accessed and the drive starts up okay. No noises or strange actions. Just won't format or partition.

Shane

Could the drive be password protected?

Did it come out of a DVR?

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

No I don't think it is password protected, nothing comes up like that but I don't know what I would be looking for or the signs. At one time I did manage to partition and format, but the drive comes up as local disk with files all gibberish or something. This is a dummy drive to play around with to learn all about these things. Fist things first and that will be to get the terminal connected to my computer and get that working so we know what’s going on. Currently researching what to do, so far not getting very far but will post more when I can.

Shane

So I guess I can get this little (RS232 Serial to TTL) adapter, shove it into the com port of my PC and connect to the drive and I can have fun with it? Hope so...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00BXX2OU2

Cool, now lets blow up a hard drive...

Since the drive is IDE and not SATA, I assume the ports I need to conect are highlighted in this post. I think so.

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/158484- ... uart-port/

Shane

Okay, I got hold of the serial device and connected it to my pc and tried to connect the cables to the hard drive as stated on the image. I'm using the Putty command window to interface with the drive, but nothing is showing up on the screen except a green square. I changed the RX and TX connections, but all I get is a blank screen.

Not sure if its relevant, but the drive itself is powered by an external power source, but I connected all three cables RX\TX and ground. The drive is not connected by IDE cable too. Not sure if this is relevant.

New to this, so not sure what I am doing to get a terminal log. I assume the log will appear on the Putty window as soon as the drive is turned on.

Also, in what order to I make the connection. Activate the drive first, or have putty running before I turn the drive on.

The hardware for the COM1 port is:

Bits per second: - 9600
data bits: - 8
parity: None
Stop Bits: 1
Flow control: Xon/Xoff (I tried setting this to None, still did nothing)

On putty the "Bits per second is listed as 9600" and the "Serial line is COM1"

Not sure what is going on, but can't figure out if the got the serial adapter confugered correctly to talk to the hard drive. The adapter has TX AND RX LED's that flash when the drive is powering up, and the same happens when connected to the serial port on my computer, but I can't get Putty to communicate at all. All the text remains on the black screen and when I return, it remains there until it is over written. I've tried adjusting the speed and other options to no avale. No idea where I am going wrong.

Shane

If you loop the Tx and Rx signals together, does PuTTY echo your typing on the screen?

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

I've looped the TX AND RX signals that come out of the adapter and although the LED lights flash when I type the commends into the Putty window, I still get the same result. The text appears on screen, but when I press return the text remain and the green curser returns to the beginning of the same line. If I type anything, it will overwrite the existing text on the same line.

Is this what is supposed to happen?

Shane

When you loop back the Tx output to the Rx input, you should see an echo of everything that you type. A Carriage Return (CR) is echoed as a CR, not a CRLF (CR + Line Feed), so that's why the line is overwritten.

That said, it is possible that your typing is being echoed locally rather than via the external loop. Do you still see an echo if you break the loop? If so, then there will be an option within PuTTY to disable local echo.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Putty does the same thing if I brake the loop or not. I even turned off local echo in the program, but that does nothing. If I unpower the adapter, then nothing is displayed in putty.

Strange.

I did have the COM1 port disabled in Bios before I used it, so prehaps there is some setting inside Bios it must be set on for it to work properly.

Shane

Okay, scratch my last post, seem to have it running now and now talking to the messed up drive. When I turn it on this is what I see in putty:

Reset
4096k x 16 DRAM
GALAXY - 1_Disk S-6D 09-22-06_15:48

Buzz HM SFI
!
(P)PATA Reset
Slave
>Reset

Age Typ Hds Lent Loopcnt TrkGn Thld Grey Intg TrkOfst SpnIntg
50 06 5 0000 0000000 0026 01703F 05E7 0000 00CC
T>Reset

Age Typ Hds Lent Loopcnt TrkGn Thld Grey Intg TrkOfst SpnIntg
50 06 5 0000 0000000 0026 01703F 058C 0000 00CE
T>

I did more playing around to see if I can get any more information.

I followed some of the codes used in this post: - viewtopic.php?f=1&t=25621&hilit=PATA+Reset

Did not go very far into the post, Glad I did not enter the (2>N2) command in the post otherwise I might have broken this drive by the low level format.

Anyway, after going through some of them, the (Alt Defect List) seems to be very long... I have included a Putty log with all the tests and information. Any other tests or commands I can enter to provide more information?

Shane

So from all my stumbling around I think the drive I have is not A F3 drive that is plastered all over the forms. I've been selective with the commands I enter into terminal but no success at the moment. I entered 1>N1 and got this: Initializing SMART Sectors...RPO..................................ENDOK.

Don't know what that does, but drive seems okay.

What I would like to know is if there is a way to scan the hidden system sectors for bad clusters and have them marked out in the appropriate P OR G lists through terminal so the computer can format the drive. I think there could be a bad cluster somewhere that is stopping everything from working where the partition and format data is stored. However, I still know very little at this stage to make the right call.

Shane

What firmare has ?

What firmare has ?

I don't have any firmware tools from seagage, but I am sure I can Google the software. But I was wondering if all the data can be copied through the terminal. Also, what does this self scan do. Does it wipe the drive completely or preform checks to restore the drive to default. Nice to learn...

I'll also try and do a normal partition and format with terminal connected to get more information before I dive into the deep end...

Shane

So from what I can understand from the website, running this command (N4, 22, carriage load, then press CTRL + T) at level T will scan the system area for bad sectors and mark them in the G-List. Which I hope will resolve the issue. Found it on this website https://sites.google.com/site/seagateha ... -structure

Any truth to this?
Shane

Then if the heads are fine and the drive just has bad sectors in different places then the test will complete and nothing else needs to be done with the drive? EG like you said before, reloading the firmware and modules like you mentioned. I assume this only happens if there is a failed head and I will need to start again.

Hoooo learning all kinds of things while fiddling with terminal. Anyway, so the different tests are after the N. So N2 is test level two, N3 is test level 3 and so on. I don't have pc3k udma card or salvation data box (hardware) so I am doing everything through terminal. I have not seen a way to copy the ATA and Vendor data through terminal. Not yet anyway, but I am hoping its possible.

Attached is another putty log of all the crap I put into it. After fiddling around I managed to find the command to view the P list, G list and other lists I have no idea what they are for. But the P list was very big so I cut it short while it was transmitting. G list is the same as the last one. But the reserve list looks like it is empty. If there is a head problem then something would have gone wrong in viewing the lists or an error would have appeared at the beginning. But this drive is a DB35.3, Quite possible its out of a DVR Sky box so it would not have been knocked around. I'll play around with it later when I'm in the mood.