Hello,
This is my first post here. I discovered the forum with the tvs diode removing technique. It worked for 2 hdd... Thanks !(and sorry for my english !!)
I have a seagate momentus 7200.4 SATA hdd, which appears to be dead...
the hdd ST9500420AS worked well for 2 years. I sometimes heard clic, followed by a short system hanging.
Recently, clic and os hanging ended up in a blue screen and the hdd is not any more recognised by the BIOS.
I posting here after hours of internet readings. What I learnt yet is :
-this disk is accessible trough a usb/serial to tll device. It allows to read errors and sometimes fix problem on this disk.
-the seagate firware has problem and could places the hdd in bsy state which causes the disk to be suddenly unrecognized by the BIOS,
-the momentus 7200.4 is known also to hang and make head crash due to the bad firmware... so many good news about this hdd !!!!
-if a disk is suddenly unrecognized by the BIOS, it could be the head arm which stucks outside its park place, for some reasons (???). In this case, opening it and moving manually the arm to its park place could allow hdd restart and data recovery before the hdd will be definitely died.
Thus, I removed the hdd from the laptop, and connected it to an arduino configured as usb to ttl device. Connected Tx Rx and GND to the hdd and used hyperterminal to send commands to the pcb.
I was hoping retrieving the know BSY state error but instead got theses errors :
-PCB removed
Rst 0x10M
LED:00000067 FAddr:003400F0
LED:000000CE FAddr:00293833
Rst 0x10M
LED:000000EE FAddr:0034011A
-PCB on the hdd, but head connector isolated
Rst 0x10M
LED:000000EE FAddr:005664A8
-PCB on the hdd
Rst 0x10M
LED:00000067 FAddr:0022D3F7
LED:00000047 FAddr:00005B53
Rst 0x10M
LED:00000047 FAddr:04003EBC
The disk spin on, hdd clic, then the error appears in the terminal.
Ctrl+Z give me access to :
ASCII Diag mode
F3 T>
if I do
F3 T>/2
F3 2>U or Z
I get :
DiagError 00005014
Could not spinning up and down disk with command U and Z,and other commands does not work (some work, like ^X or ^Q)
I found that 0x5014 is: "the R/W is not ready to accept requests". i.e. the hdd stops before the head start to do something useful (R/W)
Couldn't doing useful things in the terminal, I supposed a head crash or head stuck in the middle of the platters.
I opened the hdd and found a big circle scratched on the platter.
When powering on without the cover, we see the arm leaving its park place and reach the middle of the platter, clearly at eh circle scratched mark and then returning to the park.
This appears 10-11 times and stops. each time an error like LED:00000047 FAddr:04003EBC is thrown in the terminal.
After theses steps, I does not want to powerup the hdd anymore to try wasteful things, as I am afraid to reinforce the scracth on the platter...
Well, that's all... Could you guide me to lasts attemps to recover some of my data (especially 3 last weeks of intensive code on sensors for art and without backup !!!)
Thank you !!
PS. I am especially disappointed about the fact I didn't knew the faulty firmware should be updated to avoid such head crash. Here is the
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/547122-seagate-st9500420as-firmware-update.html link, but for me it is too late !!