Seagate 7200.11 1TB - Spinup, Clicking, Spindown...

[loki]

You now mention that the drive is seen as a 500Gb not a 1Tb & that it is asking for you to initialise.

I would check with mhdd to see if a HPA (host protected area) has been set? if so you should be able to remove it.

Dont initialise the drive.

Loki

[fzabkar]

You now mention that the drive is seen as a 500Gb not a 1Tb & that it is asking for you to initialise.

slessard's drive is a ST3500320AS, not 1TB.

[Vulcan]

@fzabkar,

Good point, Franc. It's a shame that slessard has tacked-onto (some may say hijacked ) a previous thread where the title is "Seagate 7200.11 1TB - Spinup, Clicking, Spindown...", which makes these types of misunderstandings possible

@slessard,

If you're taking the risks of DIY (as it seems you are), then my next step would be to clone that drive onto other storage (several software utilities available, which need to cope well with unreadable sectors, so not Ghost, Acronis etc.), and not to try doing any data recovery directly on that drive. Of course other approaches are also possible...

[slessard]

You are right about the topic Vulcan... I sorry about that, when I saw the buzz words "Sinup, Clicking, Spindown..." it catched my interest!

So I finally received my new harddrive and a SATA to USB adapter to make things easier. I was just about to start cloning my drive but it started again to "click and spindown"... 0LBA in BIOS... last time I downgraded and updated the FW and it stopped clicking (500Gb in BIOS). I will try that again!

[jgigliotti]

Hi all I am new to this board and I AM DESPERATE for help please!
I have this exact drive (seagate st3100033as) and my wife has been using this as her storage for all of our 1,000's of kids photo's and you know what I am going to say next - yes it has failed. AND yes I am an idiot as I should know much better as I have been in IT for way too long and yes I was going to get round to macking backups one day ...... and that day never came! I AM DEAD MEAT with the wife!!!

Anyway after reading about this drive I do realize it was problematic, with F/W, motor seizing etc. Well my drive had its motor sieze, so being the techo I am I opened it up and unsiezed the motor. Closed it up and then experienced the spin up, 11 clicks and then spin down after some time.

I suspect the head may be damaged?

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks

[northwind]

Yes the heads are now damaged and the platters are contaminated with dust, debris, humidity particles etc.

This now needs to be cleaned up, have heads changed and ... pray that you didn't damage the media (VERY LIKELY) when you ... unseized the motor (in case motor was seized you wouldn't be able to unseize it, I guess your case was the rare one with stiction on 3.5" drives).

It is NOT DIY, it never was, no matter how "techo" you are, and things are now worse.

Sorry. You need to contact your local pro and get drive evaluated by someone with the right knowledge and equipment. I could help but I'm too far away.

Last edited by northwind on June 6th, 2012, 3:59, edited 1 time in total.

[fzabkar]

jgigliotti, your wife will not like what you've done.

I don't think you can avoid professional recovery services at this point.

BTW, when you "unseized" the motor, did you spin it in its normal direction of motion, and were the heads in the landing area?

Did you open the drive in a cleanroom?

[theonion]

Hello, I'm new in this so please forgive my incompetence of a beginner. And my poor english too.
I'v one ST31000333AS from a frien that "stops working" in his speach it is never dropped or some else intervence made on it.
It was used as a externel HDD. So what in fact i'v find for it is that drive is not discovered by bios and when it is attached it starts a spin
cycles (spin for 1-2 seconds stops 4-5 seconds interval then spin again) for about 5 -6 minutes then motor stops.
No clicking no other sound. I've try S.M.A.R.T - described steps below.

- insulate PCB motor contacts, switch on, wait the spins to stops, go into terminal window with ^z
- "/2", "Z"
Spin Down Complete
Elapsed Time 0.140 msecs
- remove isolating business card
-"U"

DiagError 00006008
Spin Error
Elapsed Time 6 m 4 secs
R/W Status 2 R/W Error 84150180

Try it several times as i read that it should be because of not good contact betwen the motor and PCB - same result.

I've not try to bypass the "U" spin up and continioue for the rest of the commands.
Is this - 6 m 4 secs means that for sure there is a head problem? Can someone gives his opinion?

Thanks in advance.

[labtech]

Head(s) problem.

[soso_021]

Hi everyone I'm new to this forum,

I have the same problem with wild fw code (ZZ7L) after trying to do a BSY-fix. Was it okay that I have done the LBA fix too ? my drive's capacity is detected as 2.2 T.B in bios although it is a 1TB. The original firmware version was SD35 and now with this crazy new firmware I cannot even update it with the bootable cd image downloaded from seagate.

Disk starts with a clicking sound when I turn it on. I have uploaded the sound of it Here http://www.uploadstation.com/file/mSpZn ... _Sound.aif
Can anybody identify the click? Do I need to replace any of it's heads ?

God bless me since I am a musician and I have many critical data on this hard-disk, unfortunately I'm living in Iran right now thus can't go to seagate's customer-care for the help.

Hi,

I have a ST31000333AS here, Firmw. SD25, with exactly the same symptoms:

F3 T>m0,2,2,,,,,22
DiagError 00001000
-----
F3 1>N1
LED:000000CC FAddr:0025DDD9
-----
F3 T>/2
F3 2>Z
Spin Down Complete
Elapsed Time 0.137 msecs
..
F3 2>U

Diag Error 00006000
Spin Error
Elapsed time 21.919 msecs
R/W Status 2 R/W Error 84150180
F3 2>/1

F3 1>N1
LED:000000CC FAddr:00248153
LED:000000CC FAddr:00248153


The drive starts with clicking sound, and shows than (PC3K) the correct Drive ID and serial number, but wrong Firmware version "ZZ7L" and capacity "MB ()".
Also with disconnected spindle motor the drives shows the same IDs, so the wrong values are obviously stored (also) in FLASH-ROM.

Has anybody an idea, how to solve that problem? All known Barracuda-Firmware tricks are getting wrong, with LED:000000CC... failure message, see above.

Thanks,

Thomas

[soso_021]

Hi again,
I've just updated the SD1B firmware from SD35 to SD1B by searching in seagate's DOS-flash bootable cd, running this command I forced it to flash the firmware without confirming it previous firmware version :

FDL497A -m brinks -d brsd3b8h.lod -s st31000333AS -s -x -b -v -a 20

after this drive clicked 11 times and was no more detected on the BIOS, even the terminal is not working. It bring the same old "LED:000000CC failure messsage" when I want to spin down/up the motor. Even seagate is not helping me with that since I'm from Iran. Seemingly, there is no different between literature/art experts and camel-riders and terrorists to them. I dunno what to do. This is what I get when I want to check my serial number at seagate's website (I have to do it via a proxy-server)

Embargoed Country Notice

Please be advised that various governmental agencies regulate imports, exports, and re-exports of commodities, technology, and software. As a United States manufacturer and importer/exporter, it is the duty and legal obligation of Seagate and its employees to comply with the various international trade regulations. There are certain countries and entities that require prior government authorization before exports can take place, and certain countries and activities where exports are entirely prohibited.

Seagate and its employees are prohibited from transacting any type of business with the following countries:

Cuba
Iran
North Korea
Sudan
Syria

In accordance with U.S. regulatory requirements:

* Seagate and its third party service providers cannot accept product returns from any of the restricted countries listed above.
* Seagate and its third party service providers cannot provide any services to you if you are located in any of these restricted countries.
* Seagate and its third party service providers are not responsible for product returns from these countries.
* Do not return Seagate products to Seagate nor its third party service providers if you are located in any of these restricted countries; the product cannot be returned and will be destroyed.



p.s : even the data recovery companies does not help, they just get more and more money...

[labtech]

I think there has been a lot of troubleshooting that has been done up to this point where the chain of logically tracing back to the original problem (in order to apply the correct solution) has become blurrier and blurrier with each "fixing" attempt.

Unfortunately, it seems the "fix" was inappropriate for the actual problem that the drive sustained to begin with.

I suggest that you propose a recovery fee for any of the data recovery companies you have tried to contact. And worst case scenario is you get a "no". The challenge will be whether you accept and are comfortable with the quality of the service provided.

Alternatively, maybe you have friends outside Iran to who you can send the drive to. From there, have your friends sending it to the data recovery company of your choice.

Lastly, if not of these are options for you, the data is really critical to you, and can afford to invest more, then purchase 2-3 more drives like your drive (few general matching specifications are available in a couple of places online) and experiment, read a lot, and prepare better with the goal of learning how to recover your case. The better preparation, the more chances of success there are.

[soso_021]

I think there has been a lot of troubleshooting that has been done up to this point where the chain of logically tracing back to the original problem (in order to apply the correct solution) has become blurrier and blurrier with each "fixing" attempt.

Unfortunately, it seems the "fix" was inappropriate for the actual problem that the drive sustained to begin with.

I suggest that you propose a recovery fee for any of the data recovery companies you have tried to contact. And worst case scenario is you get a "no". The challenge will be whether you accept and are comfortable with the quality of the service provided.

Alternatively, maybe you have friends outside Iran to who you can send the drive to. From there, have your friends sending it to the data recovery company of your choice.

Lastly, if not of these are options for you, the data is really critical to you, and can afford to invest more, then purchase 2-3 more drives like your drive (few general matching specifications are available in a couple of places online) and experiment, read a lot, and prepare better with the goal of learning how to recover your case. The better preparation, the more chances of success there are.

That's 100% right, now that I read the whole thread of posts again I think It seems to be a head problem,
and of course I think I should contact a major company. Their price is a bit high but I believe that they can solve these sort of problems by changing headstocks in cleanrooms.

I have just called four of my friends each living on different sides of US/CA, I'm suspecting the Seagate-company to label my hdd's serial number as "from Iran", and I don't trust them anymore. Exact thing happened when I bought another hard disk with exact same model and close serial/f.w number to experiment on them first. But seemingly the firmware update results in bricking it.

Thanks for your reply dear "labtech"

[labtech]

No problem.

Based on your detailed explanation of the manufacturer's policies, obviously there will be issues with the drive's SN and how it shows up in the manufacturer's database. They know just about everything about the drive. But, these were the policies agreed on by manufacturer, country, etc., so not much can be done there.

As result, your route is someone other than the manufacturer, unless you, or somebody on your behalf, again presents the situation to them in a more personal matter, if possible, tell them what you need, your expectations before sending in. Should you not like what you hear, then move on to other places that fit your expectations.

Best wishes

[soso_021]

Good news everyone, I've just found the solution for my drive by going directly to a pro-DR company which cost me a song. They use ACE-lab technology. The root-problem was identified with the faulty heads [as you mentioned several times in this post], and the "boing boing" sound was proving it. Right now It's under surgery n I'm hoping the "unique", "hdd-specific" firmware data on at least one the platter(s) are not overwritten by my f.w update so that they can literally repair it after the head-surgery... Sadly have to wait another two days to get the results...From now on I'd turn into an official seagate-company advocate and of course will try using Western Digital or Toshiba which is not (still) consolidated with seagate! (see the diagram)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... dation.svg

By the way thanks for sharing your precious experiences and technical info, It's great to have your advises during those hard-times...

[FranzHeinz]

Hello,

after fixing the BSY-Problem I got the same error as many others here after typing "U":

Code:

Dialog Error 00006008
Spin Error
Elapsed Time 26.759
R/W Status 2 R/W Error 84150180


At the same time it seams, that the S.M.A.R.T.-Functionality of the drive got corruptet. I can not get any information of it, nor running a (short/long) S.M.A.R.T.-Test.

Seen, that I didn't even move the drive, I think it's very unlikely that it is a isue with the head or the motor.

Any suggestions?

[stellvia]

Hi everyone, (this is my first post here)

I've fixed more than ten 7200.11 HDD in this year , and I have some tips to solve some problem during the firmware recovery process.

◎If you received the message in this step , it may mean PCB doesn't contact HDD .(*1)
You have to match both ends.
(Since you have loosen some screws to make PCB separated to HDD in the first step .)

F3 T>/2
F3 2>Z
Spin Down Complete
Elapsed Time 0.123 msecs
F3 2>U
DiagError 00006008
Spin Error ^^^^(you may see this message, or other codes)
^^^^^^^

You can try to do this :
(don't close the terminal connection, or you have to do all step from first ,even other errors may happen)

1. Tight some screws on PCB.
2. Retry the step "F3 2>U"
3. Wait for a while.
4. If these steps work, you can see the normal message :

"Spin Up Complete
Elapsed Time 7.093 secs (*time varies)
F3 2>"

and you continue later operate

(*1) In some cases(like usb hub), your USB port doesn't supply enough power to TTL, so it can't drive the HDD spindle motor. You can connect the USB side to mainboard directly.

◎If you received the message at any time in the operation , it may mean your HDD is still in BSY status
(you can find out this by HDD busy LED sparkling on the case, or use ohter software like MHDD to diagnostic).
You have to release the BSY status.

(like the diagnostic) LED:000000CC FAddr:00243FCF (0025BF67 ,or some other codes)
^^^^^^^
R/W Status 2 R/W Error 84150180
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

It may occur in these scence:
1. You don't release BSY status in the earlier step.
2. You've entered wrong command or you misundestand some detail in this firmware issue solution.

You can try to do this :
1. Type CTRL+Z quickly many times ,unless the "F3 T>" appears.
2. Connect and disconnect HDD some times ,unless the "F3 T>" appears.
( this means you have to try the whole steps from first again and again)
Though these steps don't look like general solutions , it does help me sometimes.

hope all above tips help you guys......

[DRforensic]

In above case, do you use the motor isolation method with PCB or better shirt the pins??