Hi. I have a Seagate 7200.12 ST3500418AS 500GB drive, FW: CC38 that is no longer seen by my computer BIOS.

The back story is that it was working with no apparent issues, then suddenly one morning (the day I left to go on vacation) it didn't work anymore. I have backups that might be up to a week out of date, so I'm not to worried that (the majority of) my data is unrecoverable. Given that, I think there are some files that I'm not too keen on losing - or losing the edits I made, and the prospect of spending $1K or something like that from Seagate Data Recovery services seems... a bit unnecessary at this time.

This disk is actually a warranty replacement from Seagate. I've actually only been using it a few months - I moved my system to it when another disk started having some problems back in April. So, naturally I am a bit annoyed that this "Certified Repaired HDD" only lasted about 4 months before it croaked.

I note a lot of oxidization on the contact pads of the electronics board mounted to the back of the HDD. These are the pads that interface with the HDD motor and internal circuitry connectors. I cleaned those pads up, re-tinned in some cases, but that didn't seem to make any difference to the response of the HDD.

I've got it connected right now to a SATA to USB adaptor unit. I've put the disk to my ear and the disk spins up and it also sounds like the heads are moving as well. So, I'm wondering if there is a possibility of making this thing work again.

As it happens I actually have access to a clean room, and probably a logic analyzer too if needed. I've been reading some of the forum posts and I see reference to terminal commands, though I am guessing I need some sort of hardware interface outside the bounds of my computer... is that true?

Is there anything I can do to "reset" this device to make it work again? Any other suggestions?

Well, I fixed my drive. I gleaned enough from this forum and others to make it work.

The N1 command didn't seem to help (I think); it returned:
Init SMART Fail
LED:000000CC FAddr:0024E2DB

I cycled the power a few times, tried the spin down/spin up sequences... then finally tried at the "F3 T" prompt>m0,2,2,0,0,0,0,22.

Plugged the unit back into my USB-SATA (and IDE) adaptor unit and lo and behold; it was recognized by Windows (hoorah!). Busy copying files off it now.

For what it is worth - I found that USB-SATA unit very handy, especially as it has a separate power supply with switch. It also helped that I had a 2mm pitch socket connector lying around (I work in an electronics laboratory) that I soldered to some 0.1" pitch pins that I then stuck into the end of a spare "CD-Audio" cable - the type that you might have lying around from the days when you needed to connect your internal CD/DVD drive to the motherboard... what is nice about that connector is it is easily modified (moving the wire positions). Anyway, added power to the TTL converter, hooked it all up and made it go. Woo hoo.

Oh, and thanks to all who replied...

Firstly congratulations on recovering your data

N1,,22