Old Seagate st3160022ace - lost capacity 160 to 31 GB

[morph_eus88]

Hi,

This is my first post, please excuse my "noobness" .

I got this old Seagate U Series 9, model ST3160022ACE (160 GB, 5400 RPM) from a friend. He had it laying around for quite some time after "breaking" it with DBAN and recently decided to throw it away so I asked him to let me fiddle with it first. Initially I wanted it to rip out the magnets from inside but decided to test it first in my computer.

The drive seems to start without any problems, but instead of showing its full capacity which is 160 GB, it only shows 31.50 GiB. Of course, I tried to wipe it clean, format it, repartition it, etc. without any success. In GParted, it reports the number of total sectors as being 66,052,096 (found online that it should have been at least 312,581,808). I also managed to connect it to the serial port with a MAX232 circuit and it reported this:

Interface task reset
1024k x 16 buffer detected
ALPINE - 1_Disk M-21 11-25-03 18:53

Buzz - Head Mask FFFF - Switch to full int.
Spin Ready
9.51 08-05-04 16:26
(P)PATA Reset
Master

Can this drive be recovered to its full capacity? I don't care about the data. Tried searching for a command to restore the number of sectors but couldn't find anything.

Thanks for reading.

[fzabkar]

Check that the "alternate capacity jumper" is not installed. The Master and 32GB clip jumpers are at opposite ends of the jumper block. It is easy to get them mixed up.

U Series 9 ce Product Manual, Rev. F (section 3.3.3):
http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/supp ... 71705f.pdf

Otherwise you could use HDAT2 or SeaTools for DOS to restore the drive's full native capacity.

[morph_eus88]

Thank you for the reply.

There are no jumpers installed. I have downloaded both SeaTools for DOS and UBCD (which contains HDAT2 version 5.0) and unfortunately neither worked. With SeaTools, selecting "Set capacity to max native" or "Set capacity manually" both don't do anything. When trying to use "Set capacity to 32GB", the operation fails. The startup log is as follows:

Max native address: 0
Device is 28 bit addressed
Number of LBAs: 66055247 (33,820 GB)
SMART has not been tripped
DST is supported

With HDAT2, the drive is detected but a red exclamation mark is drawn near its model number. The status says: SMART: Alert, SET MAX: NOT_SUPPORTED. I can't seem to be able to set the max address. Trying to scan for bad sectors errors and beeps on every sector (Aborted command). Wiping it seems to work.

Any ideas on how to proceed from here?

[Dmitri]

This looks quite similar to an HPA cut. Many utilities allow to edit HPA (e.g. MHDD should), so that's what you can try first.

Also you can look at the HDD Capacity Restore Tool, though I have no idea whether it will work properly in this case: http://hddguru.com/software/2007.07.20- ... tore-Tool/

Finally, there's a passport editing option with something like PC-3000, but that seems hardly reasonable with a 160 GB HDD.

[fzabkar]

Could this be the problem?

http://www.hdat2.com/hdat2_faq.html#q6

A6: There is a problem of incompatibility on some hard drives (e.g. Seagate and/or in an external Maxtor One Touch) when you are using 48-bit command for removing Host Protected Area (HPA) created with 28-bit command.

48-bit command cannot remove HPA created with 28-bit command and vice-versa.

[drHDD]

This looks quite similar to an HPA cut. Many utilities allow to edit HPA (e.g. MHDD should), so that's what you can try first.

+1 I would say it's definitely HPA cut.

If it doesn't work, then put command G4 in terminal and show us what you see.

[morph_eus88]

I feel lost already . Unfortunately I know nothing about hard drive repairing so maybe the best idea would be to stop trying.

Finally, there's a passport editing option with something like PC-3000, but that seems hardly reasonable with a 160 GB HDD.

Unfortunately I don't have any dedicated hardware.

This looks quite similar to an HPA cut. Many utilities allow to edit HPA (e.g. MHDD should), so that's what you can try first.

+1 I would say it's definitely HPA cut.

Tried to run the HPA command and it says this:

Read NHPA
FAILED
Done

At the top of the program ERR and ABRT are enabled.

If it doesn't work, then put command G4 in terminal and show us what you see.

Got no idea how to do that . After starting the drive should I press Ctrl + Z then enter G4?

There is also the possibility that "STUFF" is messed but .... I would check HP first as stated. You can use victoria in PIO mode to detect the drive and see if you can restore the HPA to full size with the correct 28 or 48 bit command. If it fails i would start attempting to set stuff to default or write vendor to the drive (if you have some seagate firmware tool that supports your drive).

I'm afraid I have no tools to work with. Maybe it's time to let it die as I don't want to waste your time anymore. And reviving a small, slow and old hard disk doesn't really justify the effort.

Thank you all.

[morph_eus88]

Done, but the only thing that changed is the name of the disk. It now shows up in the BIOS as ST2Disk4Head, but the size remained the same.

Another interesting thing is that smartctl says that the drive is on its death bed:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0012 100 100 193 Old_age Always FAILING_NOW 0

[fzabkar]

Another interesting thing is that smartctl says that the drive is on its death bed:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0012 100 100 193 Old_age Always FAILING_NOW 0

Very strange. I would have thought that the raw value should be non-zero if the drive were really failing. Also, Google turns up several SMART reports for the ST3160022ACE, each of which would suggest that Value/Worst/Threshold numbers of 100/100/97 are what we would expect from a drive without any errors. ISTM that there is some weird firmware bug or corruption.

[morph_eus88]

Very strange. I would have thought that the raw value should be non-zero if the drive were really failing. Also, Google turns up several SMART reports for the ST3160022ACE, each of which would suggest that Value/Worst/Threshold numbers of 100/100/97 are what we would expect from a drive without any errors. ISTM that there is some weird firmware bug or corruption

Indeed, it's strange. Some other attributes are off as well. For example the power on hours count shows only 6 hours .

@Spildit: Very interesting posts. I'll have to study the info a bit more and find the right tools for the job .

Thank you for the information, will report any progress.