Hi,

I'm a new member but having an issue with a Seagate 7200.11 drive. The model is ST3500320AS. At first the drive would no longer boot into Vista giving the non system disk error. I figured my wife got another virus from Hotmail that wiped out the MBR. I used one of the Linux based partition recovery tools and could see the data. A few days past before I was able to pick up a drive to copy my data off to. At this point the drive is only intermittently recognized by my bios. I tried connecting the drive to another PC with the same result. Eventually the drive was no longer recognized at all.

I called Seagate Recovery Services and they said it sounded like a firmware issue and to send the drive in. I did and they said they reflashed it and could connect but the drive had alot of read errors. The tech said it came in as a level 2 and quoted me a rather high fee for the recovery. I told him I thought it would be free and he said whoever told me that was incorrect. I was just a little upset at this point and asked that the drive be returned.

After receiving it I still had the same issue. Neither PC even sees the drive at post but I can hear it spin up and it seems to be constantly running. From the research I have done this was one of the issues with the original firmware. I guess I'm just a little stumped that it is still having this issue after Seagate said they reflashed the firmware.

Could it be the PCB? From what I've read you cannot swap the PCB on a 7200.11 series drive due to a portion of the firmware or something being written to the drive. I have found the threads and tutorials on fixing the "busy" issue but is it trying if the firmware has already been updated?

Normally I would just send it in for replacement but my wife has some important data on the drive and never told me so it wasn't part of the backup.

Drive will be restored to the original state (if possible) before shipping it back to client

But your drive clearly has read errors in addition to possible FW problem (if any)

_________________
SAN, NAS, RAID, Server, and HDD Data Recovery.

Not quite sure I understand. Are you saying Seagate would "downgrade" the firmware back to the original version before shipping it back?

It definately had a firmware issue according to the Seagate tech. There is no clicking or unusual sounds coming from the drive. It spins up and keeps running. It has all the symptoms of the "Busy" error I read about.

I received a drive about half a year ago standard SD15 issue. Told the client that he can take advantage of the free recovery with I365. Also told him not to tell em that he was at another data recovery shop. I365 bypassed the lock and then reported to the guy that he has bads on the drive and he has to pay 800$ CAN. He refused and ended up coming back to me. The drive was indeed locked again when i got it , standard procedure gave access to LBA and image of the drive came through with just a handfull of bads. IMO I365 is just tired of working on the drives for free and if there are any other issues they charge. However if u refuse the charge , the drive gets locked again. From business perspective i can understand that.

Seagate promised free recovery for drive with firmware issue only. And they keeping their promise
Bad blocks is different story

_________________
SAN, NAS, RAID, Server, and HDD Data Recovery.

Doomer , i understand that , but in that particular case bads where not that bad. And if the drive would have been shipped back with FW issue resolved the guy could have accessed the data himself. But the FW issue ( the repair for which is free ) was restored to original locked state.

That's a big question

_________________
SAN, NAS, RAID, Server, and HDD Data Recovery.

So in cases like the ones described is that one or two or more bad blocks before the "free" recovery has to be paid for by the Seagate end user? And who decides?

Obviously seagate data recovery tech will decide. They have different levels assigned to the recovery projects. Probably based on the amount and location of the bads. However i am not privy to the operating procedure of seagate recovery branch so its just speculation.

Follow the DIY procedure at least as far as getting a terminal report from the drive. That may narrow down the fault.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

I thought I would post an update. I received clarification from the Seagate tech that they didn't do anything to the drive because it had too many read errors.

I decided to go ahead with the DIY and built the RS232 converted as described. I was able to connect to the drive and unlock it. The DIY is very easy but you must follow it EXACTLY as written. Once the drive was unlocked and able to be seen by the BIOS I ran the SeaTools. The short test failed stating there were bad blocks present. I ran the long test as suggested and it found all the bad blocks but stated the repair failed. I figured I would just go ahead and try to use the EaseUS recovery tool to see if I could get the partition back. I rebooted and to my surprise Chkdsk started running automatically on my drive. After about 30 minutes the PC finished booting and I now had full access to the drive and all the data. Not knowing how long it would be available I immediately copied all the necessary files to my 2TB USB drive.

Thinking back I'm finding it hard to believe Seagate even tried to load the firmware as they stated. Simply unlocking the drive from the "busy" state allowed me to access the drive and retrieve the data. Seagate quoted me $900 for something that took me less than 30 minutes to accomplish. For the record the drive was sent in for only the unlock and firmware update. The tech said they would update the firmware and if that didn't fix the issue I would then they would notify me. Since I was able to unlock the drive and update the firmware (which I did after retrieving my data) after Seagate said they could not tells me they didn't even try. Thanks for the great support Seagate and consider this my last drive ever purchased from your company.