recovery from Seagate 7200.8

[JoshNC]

Hello,

I had 4 identical Seagate drives in a raid 5 configuration using software raid under Linux. While on vacation, a fan in my system died, and I ended up losing 2 of the drives. I had a backup of almost everything I needed, but would like to try getting a few things off that I didn't have backed up. It's not that big of a deal if I can't recover it. I've imaged the 2 remaining good drives. I tried swapping parts between one good one and one bad one, but couldn't get it to work.

Then, I discovered this forum and found out about being able to connect a TTL serial adapter to the drive to read any errors. I've done this on the other bad drive, but only get this from it:

Interface task reset
4096k x 16 buffer detected
TONKA - 1
_Disk M-27 03-30-05 11:42

Buzz -

and it just hangs there.

These are the specs of the drives:
Seagate 7200.8
Model: ST3250823AS
Firmware: 3.03
Size: 250 GB

Can anyone provide some guidance on what I might be able to do now?

Thanks!

[pcimage]

Can you hear the drive spinning normally?

[JoshNC]

Wow - thanks for the quick responses!

@pcimage - Yes, the drive does sound like it spins up correctly - sorry I didn't think to include that in the initial info.

@Spildit - 1) I had two good drives and two bad drives. The first set of good/bad drives is just set aside. I'm guessing they're both toast at this point. Now, I'm working with the second set of good/bad drives. Sorry I didn't make that more clear. With the second set, I did swap the control boards, but also swapped them back.
2) Great idea about testing the ttl terminal with a known good drive. I tried doing CTRL+Z on the bad drive with no response. With the good drive, I initially get this:

Interface task reset
4096k x 16 buffer detected
TONKA - 1_Disk M-27 03-30-05 11:42

Buzz - Head Mask FFFF - Switch to full int.
Spin Ready
3.03 06-21-05 17:16

Issuing CTRL-Z adds > on a new line.
So, I don't get the T> but it appears to at least be a prompt.

Also, I don't get the "Head Mask FFFF ..." part until I hear it spin up and then hear head activity. On the bad drive, I hear it spin up but never hear any head activity.

FWIW to anyone that finds this thread to debug a similar drive, I'm using minicom configured with 9600 8N1 with no hardware or software flow control.