Seagate ST3500620AS 500GB Barracuda 7200.11 Advice please.

[robbo]

Good evening All,

I hope you can help me. A friend of mine has a Dell PC with the above mentioned drive as it's only disk.
The other day it ceased to function, apparently couldn't be seen from the BIOS and no boot. PC engineer replaced the disk and reloaded windows.
At this point she asked me if I could do anything to try to get the data/photo's back. (What's a backup?).......

I put the disk in a USB caddy that I have, it seems to power on ok, and spin up and initialise the heads ok, it just cannot be seen either by windows or Linux.

I then had a look on e-bay and found another disk of the same type. Everything was checked, firmware, date code manufacture site code, part numbers. The only difference is serial numbers. The new disk works fine under windows and Linux. The plan being to swap the electronics PCB as the HDA seemed to be ok?

So I swapped the PCB from the new drive to the old drive. It powered up but seems to take longer for the heads and disks to stop "chattering" and settle. It was then visible under windows but it was asking to format as if there was nothing on the drive.

To prove a point i put the old electronic PCB onto the new drive, it again made the funny HDA initialisation, but was not seen, verifying the problem I suppose. Anyway swapped everything back to original, and both disks spin up fine, back to normal with no extended initialisation noises, and the new disk is usable again.

So, can I swap this electronics PCB as I have done but is there anything additional I need to do to get this to work? Or are the PCB and HDA in effect "paired" at manufacture and you can't swap them.

Thanks In Advance

Andy.

[zebong]

the PCB for the 7200.11 it have adaptive info for each disk so will not be easy just change the pcb, you will need to change the adapatives info as well.

[poehere]

OK the HDD is not seen in the BIOS and will not post. On USB is it not seen in Windows. What is the drive doing. You say it is spinning up. Do you hear clicking noise on it? PCB swap works in some issues but not in all issues. You need to let us know what the drive original problem is. Please give us a small description of what the drive is doing with the original PCB board on it. Spinning, clicking, spin up and down then stops.... etc.

[fzabkar]

What is the firmware version of your drive?

It may be that your drive has fallen victim to the well known, and widely publicised, BSY bug. If it is so affected, Seagate offers free data recovery services.

Otherwise, see this thread for a cheap, straightforward DIY fix:
http://forums.seagate.com/t5/ATA-and-Se ... 036#M19464

Here is Seagate's Tech Bulletin:
http://www.expreview.com/img/topic/seag ... Update.pdf

[robbo]

Hello all,

Thanks for the replies. Just to clarify, the failed hard drive spins up, and sounds exactly as a working drive. It just cannot be seen from either the PC BIOS if directly connected or at all if USB caddy connected from either Windows or Linux.

When I swap the electronics PCB over the drive again powers up and spins up, however it sounds different and takes a lot longer before it gets to a steady state. At this point it can be seen under windows but it appears as a blank unformatted disk. I'm guessing this is something to do with the adaptives that need changing?

Anyway I put the original PCB on and it returned to the original symptoms of spinning up but cannot be seen.
I haven't lost the data by swapping the PCB have I????

The firmware version is DE12 and date code 09102. It seems to fit the BSY firmware bug symptoms?
I'm going to get a RS232 to TTL converter and give the reset procedure a go, unless swapping the electronics PCB has toasted the data.

Thanks for the help, much appreciated.

Andy.

[pcimage]

Almost certainly a victim of the "BSY" bug.

Nothing to do with PCB, it's fine. And yes all 7200.11 PCB's have unique data in the ROM but I doubt very much you've done any damage by trying a new one.

No free recovery from Seagate on this one, it's a Dell OEM drive.

Option 1: Have a stab yourself with the serial connection method
Option 2: Send to a pro for a better chance of recovery (we offer a £95+VAT fixed-fee on this fault)

[robbo]

Hi pcimage,

Thanks for confirming that, I have since put the serial numbers into the seagate website and it does say that there is a firmware update available
I'm in town this afternoon, so i'll pop into maplins to see if they have an rs232 to ttl converter. I'll bear in mind your offer though. I won't take this any further until i've spoken to the owner, she may not want an enthusiastic amateur fiddling to that degree
If that's the case, i'll point her in your direction.

Thanks

Andy.

[ppumkin]

Good Luck

--------------------------
www.recovermydata.org.uk

[robbo]

Hi All,

Just thought i'd update as to progress.
I purchased a USB to TTL converter and followed the recovery procedure.
Success!! Much Happiness.
The disk was visible again to the system, we have successfully copied all the data (photo's/documents) to the systems internal hard drive.
I will now try to upgrade the firmware on this drive as I guess that it will do it again at some point if I don't.
Now then, about this backup strategy......

Once again, thanks to all for the help and pointers, it was much appreciated.

Thanks and Regards

Andy.

[pcimage]

Well done!!