ST1000DM003 spinning. but not recognized

[strategy]

It's starting fine, all the good noises (no ticks or hard knocks), it's accelerating fine, head is moving for 1-2s and no other heads sound again. The spinning is still going, but not recognized at all.
I changed the PCB with a matching donor and the result is the same as with the original board. Spinning, but not recognized.

What could it be? Thanks!

Seagate Barracuda 1000GB
Model: ST1000DM003
PN: 9YN162-302
FW: CC4C

[northwind]

I'd put my money on typical 93 problem.

[data-medics]

What Northwind is saying, however cryptically, is that your drive most likely has a firmware bug relating to the media cache and sector re-allocation functions of the drive. It's a very common problem with that particular model. The normal method is to modify things in system file 93 of the firmware code do disable those functions and stabilize the drive so data can be extracted. However, you're unlikely to succeed unless you've got some professional HDD firmware tools like PC-3000.

It might be best to seek professional recovery. If it's just the firmware bug, and the heads are still good, recovery might not be that expensive. Even here in the USA, where things are very expensive, we only charge a flat $450 this type of recovery.

[strategy]

Thank you for the tip. I'll keep you posted.

[fzabkar]

Here is a simple DIY fix for an earlier model:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?t=2384

[strategy]

Ok, I got my TTL programmer (CP2102). I can't properly connect to the serial port, weird chars appears when I start the drive (▒E▒▒▒▒r▒Z"▒▒▒▒▒d▒▒p͕D$^▒7▒▒▒]▒E$^▒7▒▒▒]▒▒▒%mz5▒1▒▒'▒;▒▒▒|▒▒▒Mz▒▒]Y▒c▒b.▒▒'▒▒▒'▒Q).

Attachments

HDD1_serial.png (4.53 KiB) Viewed 6887 times

[strategy]

I had RX cable not working. After I fixed that, I managed to connect on serial port.

Boot 0x40M
Spin Up[0x000065B4][0x00006A20][0x00006E8C]
Trans.

Rst 0x40M
MC Internal LPC Process
Spin Up
MCMainPOR: EXCEPTION: SIM aborted prior to MCMT read
MCMainPOR: EXCEPTION: POR Failed General
MCMainPOR: Feature Disabled...
No HOST FIS-ReadyStatusFlags 0002A1A5
ASCII Diag mode

Now I'm trying to understand what these messages mean.

Also,
F3 T>/1
F3 1>N1

DiagError 00012001

[labtech]

N1 means "Clear SMART". May not be needed.
Rather, send N5 to show SMART values, so we can potentially learn about the drive's condition.
Needless to say it seems like the drive is not ready to receive regular commands, so it will just return errors upon sending commands. There must be other more significant issues.

[strategy]

I tried to clear smart, just as additional info.

What I'm learning now is SIM aborting and ReadyStatusFlags 0002A1A5 (at those info I referred in previous post). What I understand until now is that the translator and/or heads could be the culprit, anyway sys file couldn't be read. Am I correct?

[labtech]

Very likely