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Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
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"Seagate-based" Samsung HDD connecting to termial problems

September 15th, 2017, 5:12

Hi fellas!

My Seagate-based HDD Samsung Momentus ST1000LM024 died a terrible death the other day. I am trying to connect via Hyperterminal but all I can see in the window is just weird characters.

I tried different port speeds setings, swapping RX-TX pins. Nothing helps. Another weird thing about this bricked piece of electronics is that I can't find the ground pin on the serial port.

Any guesses?

Re: "Seagate-based" Samsung HDD connecting to termial proble

September 15th, 2017, 8:30

any unusual noise coming from the HDD ? (clicking beeping buzzing Etc.)

stiction is a very common problem with this drive

if it is then send it to a DR PRO ("not" a computer repair shop or a computer tech)

Re: "Seagate-based" Samsung HDD connecting to termial proble

September 15th, 2017, 17:07

Connect your terminal ground to any PCB ground point, eg a screw hole. Also, be aware that the LVTTL levels are 1.8V for recent HDDs. This poses a problem for 3.3V TTL adapters.

Re: "Seagate-based" Samsung HDD connecting to termial proble

September 17th, 2017, 21:50

jermy wrote:any unusual noise coming from the HDD ? (clicking beeping buzzing Etc.)

stiction is a very common problem with this drive

if it is then send it to a DR PRO ("not" a computer repair shop or a computer tech)


Thanx for replying, Jermy.

I cannot help but agree with you that stiction is a very common problem with this drive. I fixed the stiction problem and managed to rescue all the data off the hard drive, however. Now, the drive won't even mount and I can't use it at all. I guess there is a whole bunch of bad sectors on the drive (scratched platter or something) and the hdd's firmware has gone crazy trying to remap them.

It is not that I want to "resurrect" this bricked drive and do understand that a once broken hdd cannot be trusted anymore to hold data. All I want is to get some practice using the UART mode on Samsung drives.

Re: "Seagate-based" Samsung HDD connecting to termial proble

September 17th, 2017, 21:58

fzabkar wrote:Connect your terminal ground to any PCB ground point, eg a screw hole. Also, be aware that the LVTTL levels are 1.8V for recent HDDs. This poses a problem for 3.3V TTL adapters.


Thanx bro,

How do I determine at what voltage levels the TTL system of my drive operates?

Re: "Seagate-based" Samsung HDD connecting to termial proble

September 18th, 2017, 0:24

manager_lg wrote:
fzabkar wrote:How do I determine at what voltage levels the TTL system of my drive operates?

Measure them.
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