Seagate Archive HDD Failure. No Crash, No Spin, Silent.

[northwind]

Yeah, 512k won't do you any good.
Maybe you're force-feeding the size into your reader? What about if you ask it to read 1MB of the rom chip?

By the way, pardon my language, but this

4. Data Recovery Place that transferred my bios to another PCB Donor Board, said they don't back up roms and they don't have my rom to email me.

is bullshit.

I can totally understand if they don't want to cooperate, but saying they don't back up roms is hilarious.

[NeedsPractice]

Hello,

still using that file sharing site that drives me mad, while you could simply attach the file here...
Anyway it seems like all of your dumps contain only the first 512k, which is not enough, critical adaptive data is missing. So if the original chip is erased, you are busted.
Does your reader identify it, or you get no response from it?

pepe

I tried to upload .bin file on this site but it says its not supported file format. How do you do it?

I just tried to read the chip again. It can read from the rom but its all "ff"s. However, when I go to "read id" it does no "ID" the chip. It reads something off of it when I dump it, but its all "ff"s. When I use a good chip, and use read id, it will identify the chip, and then I can dump it.

The chip is on the board and solder heavily, I could heat it off the board and connect it directly to the semi conductor and see if I get a better reading. I mean what do I have to lose at this point?

If this bios data is gone forever, what do I do from here?

[pepe]

4. Data Recovery Place that transferred my bios to another PCB Donor Board, said they don't back up roms and they don't have my rom to email me.

I even wonder why they dealt with the thing at all, with such conditions. I would never just repair a board without doing the recovery itself. This does not sound too provessional from a DR facility.

pepe

[NeedsPractice]

Yeah, 512k won't do you any good.
Maybe you're force-feeding the size into your reader? What about if you ask it to read 1MB of the rom chip?

By the way, pardon my language, but this

4. Data Recovery Place that transferred my bios to another PCB Donor Board, said they don't back up roms and they don't have my rom to email me.

is bullshit.

I can totally understand if they don't want to cooperate, but saying they don't back up roms is hilarious.

Well what I think I have noticed is this, if I manual select id bios rom it only dumps 512K, if I let the software idenitfy the chip, it dumps 2mb, however, on my bios chip that was transferred, either way it only dumps a certain amount and not all of it. Like somehow they only put some of it on the rom. Also, my original bios was wiped.

What can I do? I they want to hold my bios like ransomware, whatever, can I pay them more to give me my backup? Anything. I need help.

[NeedsPractice]

4. Data Recovery Place that transferred my bios to another PCB Donor Board, said they don't back up roms and they don't have my rom to email me.

I even wonder why they dealt with the thing at all, with such conditions. I would never just repair a board without doing the recovery itself. This does not sound too provessional from a DR facility.

pepe

Here is the file after "real id" the rom first.

https://ufile.io/1ckog5ws

its larger but full of "ff"s at the end. Also, it identifies the rom as this which may not be the right rom: V25Q16DW

[NeedsPractice]

uh, so where do we go from here? Is this data still recoverable or not? And if so; how?

[Lardman]

I even wonder why they dealt with the thing at all, with such conditions. I would never just repair a board without doing the recovery itself. This does not sound too provessional from a DR facility.

There's far more to this story than the OP is posting.

[NeedsPractice]

I even wonder why they dealt with the thing at all, with such conditions. I would never just repair a board without doing the recovery itself. This does not sound too provessional from a DR facility.

There's far more to this story than the OP is posting.

no there is not. I will tell you exactly what happened since day one.

1. bought external hard drive
2. transferred files to it
3. worked for months
4. one day plugged it in, nothing, did not spin up, no sound
5. thought I plunged the wrong power adapter in it and fried something
6. got on forums
7. learned about buying a new pcb donor board and doing bios transfer myself
8. attempted bios transfer and failed
9. shipped off bios chip and pcb board to a place that does that
10. they said media was too damaged to work on
11. i talked to someone asking what else they could do? I told them I did not want full recovery of hard drive just a bios swap
12. they said they could do this
13. they transfered bios over and mailed me new bios on a new donor board
14. did not ship me back original board and bios at first
15. asked if they could ship original board and bios back
16. they did
17. who knows what I truly have at this point, they could still have my original bios, it could be in the trash, they could have my bios file saved
18. we are all here at this point now

[pepe]

it pretty much looks like a trouble. I performed successful rom recoveries from earlier families, but this one is a lot more different thing. I doubt anyone would be able to help you now.
you can try the DR guys you sent out the pcb to, but based on my feelings about their professionality i don't give much chance to that one either. I guess they only backed up the first 512K of it.
I might take a look at the orig rom but if we don't even know if it is the one indeed, it is probably another waste of time.

pepe

[NeedsPractice]

I don't mind paying you for your trouble. Is it even possible? The serial number does match my hard drive.

[NeedsPractice]

it pretty much looks like a trouble. I performed successful rom recoveries from earlier families, but this one is a lot more different thing. I doubt anyone would be able to help you now.
you can try the DR guys you sent out the pcb to, but based on my feelings about their professionality i don't give much chance to that one either. I guess they only backed up the first 512K of it.
I might take a look at the orig rom but if we don't even know if it is the one indeed, it is probably another waste of time.

pepe

Sorry to bother you but how much would you like to see if we can recreate this rom and get my hard drive working. Mean could you code a rom and I upload it to a pcb donor board and get this hard drive working? Is that possible? How much would that cost?

[NeedsPractice]

it pretty much looks like a trouble. I performed successful rom recoveries from earlier families, but this one is a lot more different thing. I doubt anyone would be able to help you now.
you can try the DR guys you sent out the pcb to, but based on my feelings about their professionality i don't give much chance to that one either. I guess they only backed up the first 512K of it.
I might take a look at the orig rom but if we don't even know if it is the one indeed, it is probably another waste of time.

pepe

Got some more donor boards in today, another one boots up the drive perfectly, stays on, however, in o/s it can't detect proper "Physical Drive Geometry". Of course because of random bios:

I just can't believe I can't get these files. Seems like the drive is right there, spinning, on, everything working... I could initilize the disk, but I heard your data is gone after that. Plus it probably wouldn't work anyway, just say i/o communication error.

Photo - 01.jpg (11.64 KiB) Viewed 13069 times

Also, in SeaTools it passes the Short Generic Basic Tests.

[ShaneWard]

Seems like the core of the problem is the ROM chip and data on it. probably it was fried and the ROM data gone.

If that is the case, the ROM will need to be rebuilt. I'm not sure, but try Seagate recovery as they created the drive and you never know, they might have a database of all the ROMS made (Wishful thinking I know.). Also, be aware the drive might be formated in 4K and the bridge board might be needed. Not sure how important this is, but if the drive does seem to work, but cannot access or initialize the drive, it could be a bridge board 4k stuff.

Not too sure.

I guess you didn't have a backup of your data?

[NeedsPractice]

Seems like the core of the problem is the ROM chip and data on it. probably it was fried and the ROM data gone.

If that is the case, the ROM will need to be rebuilt. I'm not sure, but try Seagate recovery as they created the drive and you never know, they might have a database of all the ROMS made (Wishful thinking I know.). Also, be aware the drive might be formated in 4K and the bridge board might be needed. Not sure how important this is, but if the drive does seem to work, but cannot access or initialize the drive, it could be a bridge board 4k stuff.

Not too sure.

I guess you didn't have a backup of your data?

I do not have a backup.

So you suggest I send this drive off to Seagate Data Recovery?

What about Ontrack, Gilware, or DriveSavers?

Can Pepe rebuild this ROM or create a whole new ROM and I just program it into the ROM chip?

I mean what about a RAW rip? Can we get the drive communicating with the PC on a sub low level and rip the data RAW?

[pepe]

Guys at Seagate could not do it, in fact they sent me test job to see if i can do them. Unfortunately it was a Grenada that i was able to recover the SA from, but one critical parameter i could not restore, so the user area remained unreadable.
I recovered a ROM for a drive after it was at Ontrack, so they cannot do it i suppose. We would know about it if anybody else was able to, IMO.

This parameter is there in your rom's remnants, so there is a chance i can recover it, but it is a very complex and time consuming job.
I looked into it briefly and saw it might be possible but i need the drive physically. I usually do rom recovery for those older families at 1500 eurs, i need to estimate the complexity of this job and wether i can find the time to do it.
The cheapest and least expensive way would have been reading the orig rom chip, perhaps with some special settings and measures, i suppose this chance is busted if those good people erased it on purpose :s

There's perfectly no point in experimenting with other roms, for the chance of those to be working is lower than winning all of the existing lotteries on the globe simultaneously.

pepe

[NeedsPractice]

Guys at Seagate could not do it, in fact they sent me test job to see if i can do them. Unfortunately it was a Grenada that i was able to recover the SA from, but one critical parameter i could not restore, so the user area remained unreadable.
I recovered a ROM for a drive after it was at Ontrack, so they cannot do it i suppose. We would know about it if anybody else was able to, IMO.

This parameter is there in your rom's remnants, so there is a chance i can recover it, but it is a very complex and time consuming job.
I looked into it briefly and saw it might be possible but i need the drive physically. I usually do rom recovery for those older families at 1500 eurs, i need to estimate the complexity of this job and wether i can find the time to do it.
The cheapest and least expensive way would have been reading the orig rom chip, perhaps with some special settings and measures, i suppose this chance is busted if those good people erased it on purpose :s

There's perfectly no point in experimenting with other roms, for the chance of those to be working is lower than winning all of the existing lotteries on the globe simultaneously.

pepe

I see. So about: 1500 EUR = 1820.26 USD (for older roms) - I guess hyper inflation is not helping the US at the moment

I am sure this is much more complex and much more expensive. Well I guess I am your typical idiot. I am very sad. However, like any typical human, I guess I am human. I am sorry I wasted your time on here. I am trying my luck on some digital investments. If I ever hit it big, I'll be able to afford your services and pay you fairly, I will hold onto the drive so I can look you up in the future.

Thank you very much for your time thus far.

[NeedsPractice]

Well, looks like this is where my journey ends. For everyone that has been thoughtful and kind. Thank you. Looks like with the unexpected crash of this hard drive and the mistakes that I have made, I will not be able to retrieve this data. I will hold onto this drive-in case technology changes in the future or if I become independently wealthy and can afford a “professional recovery service”.


To all the negative people out there. Humans are human. We make mistakes even when we know better. My father has been in computers for over 50+ years in the military. I know a lot about computers and backups. Life got in the way. I have a lot going on right now and the last thing I need is smart aleck comments about backing up data.


Anyhow, I hope everyone has a wonderful day and wish all of you the best of success in life.

[pepe]

This story is so miserable and contradicting... At some point you wrote you don't mind paying, yet wanted to do it yourself. Then you wanted to buy pc3k express which costs 10K+ in eurs and in the end you were shocked by 1500. Which is a lot of money i know, but still not 10k+.

Backup is one thing, listening to others is another one (Lardman said to ask pro help if you are not confident in this field).
Anyway, enough of the 'smart aleck'-ing, wishing you all the best,

pepe

ps, i just feel sorry about all the time all the contributors invested, quite some recoveries could have been done by that effort...

[Tomset]

NeedsPractice,
What is the serial number of the disk, does it match this one?
SN....................... : Z84116C0
I looked at all your images, and this is the picture I get:
Segment: RAP
Parsing segment....... RAP
ВНИМАНИЕ! Контрольная сумма сегмента неверна!
ВНИМАНИЕ! Контрольная сумма сегмента по данным неверна!
End parsing segment... RAP
Segment: UDS_BFW
Parsing segment....... UDS_BFW
Segment: BOOTFLOADER
Parsing segment....... BOOTFLOADER
End parsing segment... BOOTFLOADER
Segment: CAP
Parsing segment....... CAP
ВНИМАНИЕ! Контрольная сумма сегмента неверна!
ВНИМАНИЕ! Контрольная сумма сегмента по данным неверна!
End parsing segment... CAP

But then they are still there:
CAP
###
<???>

RAP
###
Format revision.......... : 0x0104
Contents revision........ : 0x71060200
Number Sys Zones......... : 1
Number User Zones........ : 60
Heads count.............. : 12
FW Implementation Key.... : 0x1E

SAP
###
Addr 0................... : 0x0001C000
Addr 1................... : 0x80002400

Fam ID................... : 0x8B, (Lamarr)
Fam Member............... : 0x1
SN....................... : Z84116C0
Servo FW rev code........ : 0xD443
Max head................. : 11
Seek mode................ : A020
Flags.................... : 7A49
Head vendor.............. : default
RRO mode................. : 0005
Heads polarity........... : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Logical head map......... : 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B

If the serial number matches, you can try to build a working image.

[NeedsPractice]

This story is so miserable and contradicting... At some point you wrote you don't mind paying, yet wanted to do it yourself. Then you wanted to buy pc3k express which costs 10K+ in eurs and in the end you were shocked by 1500. Which is a lot of money i know, but still not 10k+.

Backup is one thing, listening to others is another one (Lardman said to ask pro help if you are not confident in this field).
Anyway, enough of the 'smart aleck'-ing, wishing you all the best,

pepe

ps, i just feel sorry about all the time all the contributors invested, quite some recoveries could have been done by that effort...

Those comments were most certainly not directed at you. You have been amazing Pepe. I am sorry, but I am getting tired. People are starting to harass me on other forums.

I don't mind paying, but I am not comfortable sending my hard drive to anyone at this point. I don't mind paying for a reconstructed ROM that I can program myself on a PCB Donor Board.

I am not shocked about the $1,500. Read my comment carefully. I think you and your time is worth every penny of that. However, sending my hard drive out right this moment I am not sure if my data is worth all of this yet.

I did not know it was going to be this hard.

I do wish everyone the best. I do not mind paying some consultation fees, I appreciate and respect everyone's time. Maybe I can pay via digital currency or something?

I apologize for the miscommunication and or language barrier. However, make so mistake I am very thankful.