$275 service on recovery of ST3000DM001s, good luck! If you decide to go this route, please, let us know if the daters were recovered.

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Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

http://www.onepcbsolution.com/datarecovery.html

It's for a non-invasive "dater" recovery only.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Hi fzabkar,

Thank you for your suggestion regarding the USB-serial adapter volt compatibility issue. I read the "Kindle" thread but didn't understand the "m" command modification. I don't have a volt meter and not sure if you were referring to the external USB 2.0 to IDE/SATA cable adapter bridge that I used initially or the USB to Serial (RS232) Drive Repair Tool that I just ordered?

This is the help request thread that I started regarding my Barracuda 7200.11 viewtopic.php?f=1&t=30268

Thanks,
CrashGordon

Quite often this model drives die in the middle of doing things, hence requiring invasion. Therefore, waste of time with non-invasion.
You should also add the $35 fee along the $275 if the client wants their back. At least that is what it seems like. Plus shipping...

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Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Thanks labtech,

The 7200.11 died after a routine shut down and next day boot up. I've been successful in the past recovering dead/dying drives but never experienced the technical complications like this one so I'm in a bit of uncharted waters at the moment hoping to learn from the gurus here.

I will definitely keep the forum posted with my progress and results especially if I go with a DR service.

Thanks!
CrashGordon

@CrashGordan

No problem, hope you can sort it out as 7200.14 are different type of beast compared to 7200.11.

For the record, I don't care where you send your drive for service or how much they will charge you. I was just trying to put in perspective what is likely going to be challenging with this drive given the circumstances.

One fact is certain and it is always a negative. From the moment it fails, the more tampering is done to it and the more hands it travels through, the less chances of recovery.

Best wishes

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Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Hi Shane - None of the resistors are 3.3V (on either of the PCB) - pins 7-8-9 are 5V (and through the resistors) and Pins 13-14-15 are 12V (and through resistors). As per SATA Power cable pin configurations - pins 1-2-3 (left most in the picture) are 3.3V but from picture - they do not seem to be connected to anything?

As mentioned - the disk did not spin at all when connected through original PCB and voltage on motor pins were 1.4V. With new PCB (with wrong firm-ware) the heads spin and voltage is 4+ at motor pins. So I thought it was power issue.

Hi fzabkar - thanks. I am thinking that the part that communicates with BIOS is working fine - just that the PCB can not get the drive to start spinning (due to not having enough voltage on rails?). As mentioned - with new PCB (with wrong firmware) the disks spin.

Which coils should I be measuring - and which 2 diodes? - What voltages should I be expecting?

Whoa - gotta go and get gparted and try this out. Thanks - will let you know how it goes.

HDAT2 or hdparm are what you need.

If using HDAT2, wake up the drives with the /w switch and then disable PUIS.

HDAT2 /w

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

OK - tried HDAT2, Gparted, and Ubuntu LiveCD - all see the drive but can't seem to spin it up. Also the original thread with PUIS seems to be related to some test version release of Windows 10 - so maybe this was not the cause in my case anyway.

So I think we are back to power or firmware issue?

BTW, I have a whole lot of pictures from hdparm -iI and also from HDAT2 and can upload if that would help. And HDAT was reading a lot of information so I am even wondering if it is getting to the hard-drive (or maybe picking from PCB board?).

Your PCB sounds like its fried. You won't always get a visual indication that your PCB is no longer working.
7200.14 HDD's will spin even if you attach a different PCB number and rev as long as the PCB was from another 7200.14. The issue is that you need to transfer your ROM chip from your original PCB onto a working PCB. Without the ROM chip your HDD can't come ready as its missing key adaptives unique to the read heads in your drive.

That is what I am thinking too. But I am trying to make a decision between spending $50 on PCB ROM transfer Vs. $250 for local non-clean-room data recovery (datarecovery.com) and sending it back to Seagate for $500 data recovery.

Just take both pcb's to your local tv repair shop and ask them to move the small ROM chip from the bad PCB to the good one. The try it out.

It should be very cheep. If it does not work then send it to seagate.

Latest - update. I checked voltages across the PCB in various locations and compared against good PCB and bad PCB. Near one coil on PCB with bad drive - I am getting 12V and on PCB with good drive; I am getting 0.69V. See picture attached below. Does it mean something is blown? Any idea which component is blown? Also does it also guarantee ROM chip swap would work (assuming I get identical rev PCB?).

Sorry - just realized that voltage text is very small. The place with difference is at the bottom right of the board.

@quasimatter, I'm not sure what that particular coil does, but I'm wondering if it generates the boost voltage for the VCM circuit.

It would help me understand the circuit if you could indicate the voltages at the other three coils plus the diode at the centre-right edge of the PCB.

It might also help to obtain a serial terminal log from the drive's diagnostic port.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Quick update - after the voltage check; I was fairly convinced that power something was damaged. So I ended up sending it to PCBSolutions for a ROM chip swap to a donor PCB. Will update what happens when it arrives.

OK - As promised - here is an update (and an additional twist!).

(See above for details on PCB board voltages being different and hence the conclusion that most likely the PCB board - specifically, power chips - were the culprit).

I received the PCB board with transferred firmware/ROM chip from onepcbsolution.com - the process was quite smooth though it took about 10 days for them to receive the board (This is Off-topic but relevant for others who might use them - they are in Vancouver so I figured they should get the board by land in 2-3 days since I am in Northern California and Vancouver is like just 2 states away!. But turns out the package ended up going to LA and then to some central facility in Canada and took a long route back to Vancouver). They emailed me on receiving the board and sent the new board within 48 hours. It took only 3-4 days to get back to California.

Putting on the new PCB and putting the drive on internal SATA - I could feel the disks spin (which is better than before) so I was hopeful. But the motherboard made not so nice sound and bios did not detect the drive at all (before the disk would not spin but BIOS would show a disk with 0MB). I was disappointed - but shut down the computer and restarted it - and VOILA! the drive was detected and everything was fine!!!

So I am puzzled why the first time it did not work - maybe someone knows (or can take a guess).

Anyway - I am super happy - quickly backed up the data and then tried to copy image of the disk into replacement seagate drive that Seagate had sent me (since this was under warranty). Here is the twist - half way through disk image copy - the replacement drive died!! This was exact same drive but with "different" PCB board/rev-number and it said "Re-certified" on the sticker and on the side.

Seagate was pretty good about sending out a replacement (for the replacement) - which arrived quickly - which was not "re-certified" and everything was copied from original to new drive (in the process I split partitions on separate drives - installed an SSD etc. etc.) and both drives (the original drive - which was now working great and the replacement drive which was dead) were sent back to Seagate.

Lesson learned - always back up everything!! Since everything worked out great - I think it was net positive since now I know a lot about hard-drives!!

Some interesting things I learned - WD Achronis True Image seems to work as long as there is WD drive somewhere in system (even if it is neither source nor destination). Clonezilla is not very reliable and superslow and Gparted is Awsome! And I also learned how to convert a MBR drive to GPT without losing data and extend partitions!

Thanks everyone for all suggestions and to the person who suggested to check out PCB Solution. It worked fine for me for just $50! (Given that Seagate wanted $500 for data recovery).

I changed PCB and swaped the ROM, now the disk can spin. Before it did not spin.
But when I boot clonezilla, I get SRST ERRNO=-16.

see attached picture.

ata1:00: failed command: Identify device
ata1:..: cmd ec/00:01:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 tag 0 pio 512 in

What can I do to fix that. I know the PCB is good, taken off from a good disk. did swap the rom, I noticed if I don't swap the ROM, it would not even spin.

How does the drive identify itself to BIOS?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.