Hi there,

let me start by saying that this is an awesome site! it's good to have someone the consult with when your hard drive is betraying on you

Long story short:
My (genius) brother clicked on a Facebook link which infected his computer with a virus. at first he didn't feel any difference but after a few hours (and after a reboot) the hard drive became inaccessible. The hard drive is Seagate ST9500420AS.
When I looked in the bios a saw that the computer detects the hard drive as 0GB. Iv'e tried several utilities (with Hiren's CD, capacity restore, etc) - non of them had worked. I also tried it on several computer and OS's.

As far as I know the virus did something to the SA and computer doesn't know how to deal with it.
I really want to learn how to fix it but I have no idea where to start from. I read the articles in the newbie section but it didn't help me with "where to start".

I have a background with computers so all of the terminology is pretty clear but I need a guidance...

Hi
i don't think it's a virus issue the LBA0 you get, AFAIK there is still no virus using vendor commands for specific drive brands and models.
This is a seagate F3 architecture drive so if firmware is not loaded correctly the drive can start from PCB reaching ready state and giving ID with 0Gb, so if data is important i suggest no DIY and contact a PRO, this is not a problem to fix with some free software.
Bye
Luca

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Data Recovery pro in Italy
www.ultrarecovery.com

Thanks for the quick replay.
I understood that it's not a problem that a free software can solve but I want to study how to do it on my own.
There is mo way that my brother will spend money on it (he's a poor student so I'm his only hope.
Is there a way to rewrite the hard drive firmware so it'll work again? I didn't find any update for this model at the company's site.

What should I do in order to be able to fix it. I'm not talking about magic solutions, I'm willing to study... the data doesn't need to be recovered immediately. Any guidance???

Start searching for 0LBA issue on the forums. You will stumble on plenty of material.

Just make sure you do understand what you are doing and do not do anything that is not applicable to your drive.

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

I thought it was just the 7200.11 & 7200.12 that suffered from Seagate 0LBA firmware bug?
A quick search on google shows the ST9500420AS drive as a 7200.4

Or have I learnt something new?


Loki

Looks like you learn something new today

Thats great
I'll update my info then

Loki

If your system was working perfectly before the facebook virus or something was downloaded, you could try the extream. shut down the PC and disconnect it from the mains, Pull out the BIOS battery, wait 30 seconds, put the battery back in. that should wipe the bios, so it will reload from factory settings, and then reformat the hard drive WITHOUT BOOTING from it. EG, Boot from a CD and reinstall windows, make sure to delete the partition and create a new one... Your data will be lost though.

You will have to reset your bios data, but if the drive was working okay before this incident, might have been a corruption of virus.

Shane

Kind of a deal breaker I think!

To be honest, sounds like the HDD is failed. No amount of reboots, restarts, battery removal or Windows install will solve it.

Cant be certain without a professional diagnostic, but as the Op seems persistent to solve without Pro intervention I am not sure if we will ever really know...

Thanks for the idea but the data is the important thing here. I'll try to read on the LBA0 in order to try and fix it... wish me luck

Another question if I may:
About the solution described in the link
tutorial-resolve-lba-seagate-7200-bios-don-recognize-t11040.html

Are the commands unique for 7200.11 model or it should be okay to try and do it for 7200.4 too?

That solution is for a very particular problem. The thing is you need to diagnose the problem correctly so that you know where the failure lies.

For example I had a 7200.11 250GB recently that was ID'ing and coming ready but showing as 0GB. The issue was a weak head that wasn't able to read a certain SA modules, so the fix was a headswap.

Applying a specific solution to a 'general' problem is definitely not the way to go.

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Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town

Also, with this SA repair comes many complications relating to the translator in that it allows just partial loading of it.