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Seagate expansion USB desktop 3TB Unknown device, not initi
http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=36445
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Author:  fzabkar [ February 24th, 2018, 19:56 ]
Post subject:  Re: Seagate expansion USB desktop 3TB Unknown device, not in

@igirao, ISTM that the drive has numerous bad sectors which are preventing it from coming ready. On those few occasions when it does come ready, try to obtain a SMART report.

In any case, follow Spildit's advice and get a terminal log from the drive. It may then be possible to disable certain aspects of the firmware to improve your chances of recovery.

Author:  abolibibelot [ February 24th, 2018, 21:28 ]
Post subject:  Re: Seagate expansion USB desktop 3TB Unknown device, not in

I'm not sure but it seems like you've tried to connect it in USB again, with the Seagate Expansion enclosure, as opposed to directly connecting it in SATA (or if not possible, at least through a standard external enclosure, not the native Seagate one – there may be something corrupted at that level, at least you need to rule that out).
To others : what happens when a HDD is used through an enclosure having that special kind of formatting I mentioned, automatically translating 512 bytes sectors into 4KB sectors (visible to the host machine), and the controler somehow gets corrupted ? Would it be consistent with what is observed here ? Is it possible to fix through software-only means, by manually correcting the partition table, or MBR, or something ? I myself bought a used 3TB ST3000DM001 (bad, I know – I only got movies on it) in a Seagate Expansion enclosure, I don't quite remember the specifics, but when I opened it and connected the drive directly in SATA, the partition was no longer recognized, I had to re-format it in SATA to be able to use it (it was empty at that point). Could it be something similar ? I could make some tests if that can really help.

As it's been said earlier, you should try to connect it through SATA with a “reasonably current” desktop machine (less than 5 years to be on the safe side), running with an operating system which is natively compatible with 3TB+ storage units (Windows Vista at least, Windows 7 preferable, any current Linux distribution – the one I now use for recovery purposes is the one custom-made by the author of HDDSuperClone, based on Lubuntu, containing that tool plus ddrescue 1.22, otherwise stripped-to-the-bone but you get those two excellent tools in one convenient and ready to use package, without unnecessary clutter like a gazillion different screensavers that I saw in Knoppix...).
Earlier you showed a screenshot where the actual name of the HDD appeared (ST3000DM001) : that was “promising” (even if that's still far from a victory, there can be many intricacies, some of which would be puzzling to me...). If you manage to get it recognized under Windows, but still get a 0 byte capacity and no drive letter, first check the SMART parameters (CrystalDiskInfo, HDTune...), then if all is fine, open the whole drive with an hexadecimal editor (WinHex if you can, or HxD which is free) and post a screenshot of what you see. If you get that far, you can then clone it or image it to another 3TB, preferably 4TB HDD (you can do that with WinHex or HxD if the drive is stable and doesn't have bad sectors or other SMART issues), and then either try to fix the HDD “in situ” (having a backup if it fails) or analyze the clone/image with good recovery softwares (R-Studio is an efficient and versatile commercial one, reasonably priced ; TestDisk is a free but powerful tool which can fix partitions in certain cases, while its companion program Photorec can “carve” files in “raw” mode, as a last resort, when no file system information could be retrieved). DO NOT run chkdsk, or accept to “fix” the drive, if prompted to do so, at least not unless you've made a clone/copy of the drive in its current state. (But it's possible that I've missed some key details which clearly indicate that you won't get that far, as other undoubtedly competent people have said, I don't want to give you false hope...)

Quote:
What if the zero track is bad? Then a dead hard drive?

From what I could gather, if only the “zero track” or “System area” is damaged, then a “live PCB swap” could be attempted, using a functional unit with the exact same reference – BUT I've been warned against that very procedure in another thread, so let's pretend that I didn't write this ! :)
Also, if the SA was damaged, the HDD would probably be clicking, apparently you don't hear anything abnormal so I would say that it's unlikely to be the cause here.

Author:  igirao [ February 24th, 2018, 22:11 ]
Post subject:  Re: Seagate expansion USB desktop 3TB Unknown device, not in

Spildit wrote:
I think it will be close to impossible for you to get any data out of that drive as let's take in consideration that it's not even YOUR drive ....

Ask permition to the owner of the drive to continue on and if you insist you will need at least a TTL adaptor and plug it to the drive like this :

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=192

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=193



I have a TTL, pls see the picture. Max232N (8CA39NK). I will give it a try.

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Author:  igirao [ February 24th, 2018, 22:49 ]
Post subject:  Re: Seagate expansion USB desktop 3TB Unknown device, not in

Quote:
@ abolibibelot - As it's been said earlier, you should try to connect it through SATA with a “reasonably current” desktop machine (less than 5 years to be on the safe side)


Yes, I will try to find a newer motherboard to do the test. The ones I have here with me are old.

Quote:
then if all is fine, open the whole drive with an hexadecimal editor (WinHex if you can, or HxD which is free) and post a screenshot of what you see.


I have already posted a screen shot. You can see it on page 1.

Quote:
but still get a 0 byte capacity and no drive letter, first check the SMART parameters (CrystalDiskInfo, HDTune...),


I tried Crystaldisk and Hard Disk Sentinel. Both could not see the drive. There's no clicking or any strange sound. I can hear the motor spinning and it trying to get started - the movement of the heads - but then it stops and only the motor stays spinning. The led of the enclosure is not getting on anymore. I don't know if it's because it is not accessing (reading/booting) the drive. As I said before, I swapped this drive to another seagate enclosure (but 4TB) and it didn't worked. I don't think that the enclosure controller board has to match the drive. Anyway, something has been corrupted.

Author:  rogfanther [ February 24th, 2018, 22:54 ]
Post subject:  Re: Seagate expansion USB desktop 3TB Unknown device, not in

The drive already has problems. Forget enclosures, and first thing find an adequate computer to directly plug it in via SATA.

After that, see how the bios detect the drive ( post screenshots here if possible ) , and do the tests / readings with Crystal Disk Info as requested.

Also, connect the TTL adapter as Spildit instructed you, and post here the log also.

Author:  abolibibelot [ February 25th, 2018, 2:32 ]
Post subject:  Re: Seagate expansion USB desktop 3TB Unknown device, not in

@Spildit
Quote:
Do you think that recovering a lost F3 Arch drive ROM (like the one from the OP drive) would be a "problem" so big that so far only a bunch of data recovery guys know how to do it (and charge a fortune for it) if one could just "hot swap" a Seagate F3 Arch PCB ?

This does work for some drives like WD (with limitations like translator problems that have to be "solved" by for example "SMART HOT SWAP") but FORGET about using that method on something like a Seagate F3 Arch drive, at least without moving adaptives from original patient ROM to donnor.... :shock: :shock: :shock:

Well, I've added enough disclaimer and warning, I believe... I'm quite aware, after coming here quite regularly for a few months now, that this particular range of drives are real PITA for data recovery when they begin to... misbehave. But the way the issue was presented and the answers so far have been “fuzzy” enough that I was hoping there could still be room for optimism here ! (Which doesn't happen quite often – me being optimistic, I mean.)
So, the ROM can get corrupted all of a sudden on these things, with no obvious reason and no warning ? :shock:

@igirao
Quote:
I have already posted a screen shot. You can see it on page 1.

Oh yes indeed, very first picture, I hadn't noticed that one. Maybe because it's completely empty ! But then was it connected through the USB enclosure or in SATA ?
Apparently the consensus among the experts is that the issue is a serious one...

I've been advised to get a TTL adaptor too, I didn't know what it was before reading about it here, I tried to follow eBay links provided in other threads, but the linked units are no longer sold, there are many others from many sellers, they are cheap but I don't know how to distinguish a serious product from a junk unit, I don't know which particular features are important for that kind of purpose (some have 6 pins, other have 5, I read something about voltage, but wasn't sure if it was relevant, and how to find that information...). I presume that you're pretty much in the same boat, so to speak, and it's leaking, and the captain lied...
So, for both of us, could someone please link to a currently sold TTL adaptor/adapter which will be perfectly fine for that kind of test, from a known reliable seller ? (I'd rather pay $10 instead of $5 if I can be sure that the damn thing will work flawlessly and be reasonably durable, but if that can be had for $5 then there's no reason to pay $10 ! :) )

Author:  Alexey [ February 25th, 2018, 5:53 ]
Post subject:  Re: Seagate expansion USB desktop 3TB Unknown device, not in

abolibibelot wrote:
I what happens when a HDD is used through an enclosure having that special kind of formatting I mentioned, automatically translating 512 bytes sectors into 4KB sectors (visible to the host machine), and the controler somehow gets corrupted ? Would it be consistent with what is observed here ? Is it possible to fix through software-only means, by manually correcting the partition table, or MBR, or something ? I myself bought a used 3TB ST3000DM001 (bad, I know – I only got movies on it) in a Seagate Expansion enclosure, I don't quite remember the specifics, but when I opened it and connected the drive directly in SATA, the partition was no longer recognized, I had to re-format it in SATA to be able to use it (it was empty at that point). Could it be something similar ?


Yes, that's pretty likely.

1. The converting enclosure would present the 512b sector inside it as 4K sector to the host.

2. Once the enclosure dies, the drive cannot be accessed via USB, obviously.

3. So you connect it with old (2TB limited) SATA, and it identifies as wrong size (you will get drive's correct size modulo 2TB binary; which means 3TB drive which has 3 000 000 000 000 bytes will be shown as remainder of (3 000 000 000 000) divided by (2 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024) which is 800 976 744 448).

4. So you then connect it to the modern (NOT 2TB limited) SATA, and it will not read, because all partition tables and filesystem bootsectors, and sometimes filesystems internally are put there based on 4K sector, but the drive is now properly identifying as 512byte sector. You look at partition tables and everything is 8 times smaller than you expect it to be.

I don't think it is feasible to fix this situation by modifying partitions and boot sectors. There are too many places to change and too many subtle things to worry about. It can be done, but does not seem practical. What you can do, a) find identical enclosure so the system sees it again as 4K sector or b). use most any kind of data recovery software, which will readily adjust to the 512-4K difference - that's really not a great difficulty.

Author:  fzabkar [ February 25th, 2018, 15:01 ]
Post subject:  Re: Seagate expansion USB desktop 3TB Unknown device, not in

Alexey wrote:
I don't think it is feasible to fix this situation by modifying partitions and boot sectors. There are too many places to change and too many subtle things to worry about. It can be done, but does not seem practical.

I would have thought so, too, until I read this:

Access partitions from AF drives on 4K enclosures over SATA:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=117&t=1832&p=10491

I wouldn't trust the above method, though.

BTW, DMDE can "fix" the partition table with a couple of clicks. No need for TestDisk.

Author:  abolibibelot [ February 25th, 2018, 20:07 ]
Post subject:  Re: Seagate expansion USB desktop 3TB Unknown device, not in

Quote:
3. So you connect it with old (2TB limited) SATA, and it identifies as wrong size (you will get drive's correct size modulo 2TB binary; which means 3TB drive which has 3 000 000 000 000 bytes will be shown as remainder of (3 000 000 000 000) divided by (2 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024) which is 800 976 744 448).

You meant “(3 000 000 000 000) minus (2 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024)”, I presume (which is indeed 800 976 744 448, or 746GB).
EDIT : Oh, sorry, it's the same thing actually... I should go to sleep early...

Quote:
4. So you then connect it to the modern (NOT 2TB limited) SATA, and it will not read, because all partition tables and filesystem bootsectors, and sometimes filesystems internally are put there based on 4K sector, but the drive is now properly identifying as 512byte sector. You look at partition tables and everything is 8 times smaller than you expect it to be.

I had a similar situation where I put another HDD (a Western Digital WD30EZRX) into an Akasa USB2/eSATA external enclosure, if I remember correctly connecting it through eSATA before had posed no problem, that time I connected it through USB to my laptop computer running on Windows Vista, but it appeared as 746GB, and I got a warning prompting me to “fix” the drive, without thinking twice I let it do its thing (it being CHKDSK under the hood), and it resulted in a huge mess, with hundreds of files being corrupted or truncated. Luckily, this was a backup unit (or let's say I had two drives with almost the same content, but somehow I had used the backup more recently to do some tests and conversions), the “twin” was fine, only a few text files were corrupted and not backed up, I managed to recover them with WinHex.
But the point is, external enclosures can indeed cause that kind of mess, and CHKDSK should be used with extreme caution !

Author:  maximus [ February 25th, 2018, 20:57 ]
Post subject:  Re: Seagate expansion USB desktop 3TB Unknown device, not in

I would like to point out that the BIOS does not need to properly identify the drive size to read it, only if you are booting from it. Once the OS takes over, it is responsible for identifying the drive size and working with it, at which point in time it does not care what the BIOS thinks. So technically you don't need a modern BIOS to access the drive, only if you wanted to boot from it.

Author:  igirao [ February 27th, 2018, 13:24 ]
Post subject:  Re: Seagate expansion USB desktop 3TB Unknown device, not in

I run a test with the TTL and USB adapter but the terminal screen didn't show anything (blank screen). It was working because the loopback was ok. And this test was performed through my laptop because I haven't found a newer motherboard to my desktop and I won't buy a new one just to do that. I used the Hyper Terminal Private Edition.

Author:  rogfanther [ February 27th, 2018, 14:28 ]
Post subject:  Re: Seagate expansion USB desktop 3TB Unknown device, not in

That adapter you posted up ther ( the Max232 one ) probably would not work. Just from memory, the levels in the max232 would be about +-5V, and in your hdd you need something able to understand lesse then 3.3V probably. Even a MAX3232 one could have problems.

Also, your adapter gets power from where ? Some get it from the serial port through some creative means, but others need the connected board to provide it ( like modems, routers, etc that have a +3.3V pin in its uart ) .

You will need some adapter like those mentioned by Spildit, or at least some of those people build with old cell phone cables. One based in the CP2104 chip would be easier, as it should support all voltages from 1.8V and up.

Author:  abolibibelot [ February 27th, 2018, 23:01 ]
Post subject:  Re: Seagate expansion USB desktop 3TB Unknown device, not in

Quote:
That adapter you posted up ther ( the Max232 one ) probably would not work. Just from memory, the levels in the max232 would be about +-5V, and in your hdd you need something able to understand lesse then 3.3V probably. Even a MAX3232 one could have problems.
Also, your adapter gets power from where ? Some get it from the serial port through some creative means, but others need the connected board to provide it ( like modems, routers, etc that have a +3.3V pin in its uart ) .
You will need some adapter like those mentioned by Spildit, or at least some of those people build with old cell phone cables. One based in the CP2104 chip would be easier, as it should support all voltages from 1.8V and up.

So this (CP2104, 7.99€) would be better than this (CP2102, 2.60€) ?

Author:  igirao [ February 27th, 2018, 23:24 ]
Post subject:  Re: Seagate expansion USB desktop 3TB Unknown device, not in

@rogfanther
Quote:
Also, your adapter gets power from where ?


The TTL gets power from USB port. I use a USB/Serial converter. The TTL board has a jump to turn power on/off as you can see from the picture. If you want power from usb, then you set position off. The voltage was measured from ground and vcc pins on the board when it was on.

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Author:  rogfanther [ February 28th, 2018, 11:47 ]
Post subject:  Re: Seagate expansion USB desktop 3TB Unknown device, not in

abolibibelot wrote:
So this (CP2104, 7.99€) would be better than this (CP2102, 2.60€) ?



I think so. The 2104 is rated to work with 1.8V levels, while the 2102 is not "officialy" . I´ve used the 2102 in many disks, but probably have not tried yet with modern DM series and later ones.

There are also other chips ( FTDI and Prolific ones ) that could work.

Author:  igirao [ February 28th, 2018, 15:04 ]
Post subject:  Re: Seagate expansion USB desktop 3TB Unknown device, not in

So, TTL gets power from USB port and HDD is powered up through my desktop. I worked on a 500gb seagate drive with this TTL a long time ago and it worked fine. It also should work with this 3tb drive.

Author:  rogfanther [ February 28th, 2018, 18:39 ]
Post subject:  Re: Seagate expansion USB desktop 3TB Unknown device, not in

Just to register the correct situation, the ttl adapter ( the max232 circuit ) gets its power either from the rs232 port it is connected to, or from the circuit ( when you connect it to a router, for example ) .

As for working before and now, not necessarily, because that old 500gb drive was probably 2.5 or 3.3V, and this 3TB one can be 1.8V where your adapter may or may not work. If you do not have another working hard disk to establish the adapter condition, start with measuring the voltage levels in the serial port pins of the hard disk. I think @fzakbar explains how to do it in one of his threads.

Author:  igirao [ March 1st, 2018, 17:14 ]
Post subject:  Re: Seagate expansion USB desktop 3TB Unknown device, not in

So, does all seagate drive has the same connector pinout as posted before?

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Author:  rogfanther [ March 1st, 2018, 18:47 ]
Post subject:  Re: Seagate expansion USB desktop 3TB Unknown device, not in

Yes, it should be. Depending on the terminology used, the picture could mean RX from the drive point of view, or RX from the computer point of view. So, if it doesn´t work at first, swap the rx and tx wires and try again.

Author:  igirao [ March 2nd, 2018, 15:21 ]
Post subject:  Re: Seagate expansion USB desktop 3TB Unknown device, not in

Ok, took the voltage measure from TTL and this 3TB drive as follows:

TTL
gnd/tx = 3.77v
gnd/rx = 2.05v

HDD 3TB

gnd - tx/rx = 1.82v

So, do you think that I need to get other TTL adapter as mentioned before?

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