Hi all,

Got a few of these of ebay as faulty drives and hooked them up to terminal to see what was happening and they seem to be fine. I get the



But when I try to enter terminal through the ctrl + Z command, nothing happens. Its like terminal is locked or frozen. I saw a post about shorting the read channels, but is that what I need to do to get terminal to work.

I'm planning on selling the PCB boards anyway, so they look to be working, drives spin up and read, but looks like a ton of bad sectors in important areas of the disk to stop formatting, creating partitions and so on.

Many thanks
Shane

Here are some images of the PCB. Which channels do I short to get terminal responding. Not sure if the read channels should be shorted to ground.

I'm looking at the forums, wondering if this might need 1.8V to work, or its a low voltage board. Not sure if it is. I get the terminal information, but cannot Ctrl+Z into terminal. Its only locked on (P) SATA Reset. Any ideas?

My USB Serial adapter uses 3.3v I think.

Tip: How to identify the Read Channel test points:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=123

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks for that. I haven't done anything with the drive, it more like a hobby fix if I can, but one question still remains, is this terminal voltage on this PCB 1.8V OR 3.3V

I think it's 3.3V because I am able to see the drives output terminal results, but I cannot enter the terminal mode or send commands.

Also, do these drive run a self scan when sitting Idle. Hopefully that might map bad sectors in the system area if I leave it running.

Thanks for help
Shane

This drive has be baffled. I shorted the read channels every way possible, together, to ground and so on but nothing seems to get the drive into terminal. I even put a bit of paper onto the Head stack connector and that did not work, only got the ready status flags on the terminal screen.

I tried it with the pcb off the drive, and it only does the same result.

I only managed to get the drive into terminal for a second when I constantly held the Ctrl + Z key while it booted up, then it would just go to P sata reset and then nothing.

So, Not sure what is going on. Anyone experience this behavior and got it into terminal?

Its a F3 arch drive too. Also from the label is looks like its a repaired drive from Seagate with firmware CC46. if thats helpful.

As before, its an empty drive I am messing around with.

This drive is getting annoying, I feel a terminal format through the system area will solve it completely, but I can't get the damn terminal to start. Or when it does start, its for half a second before it freezes. I tried all the ways, shorted this, shorted that, took board of drive, and the only way I got terminal to come up in the first place was shear luck or if my fingers were all over the PCB when I booted it up. Nothing...

Any ideas??? I feel its something to do with the Firmware on the chip?

are you shorting the correct read channels ... i think of these points as read channels

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Data Recovery Pakistan

Yes. I've done that. The drive starts to seek and try and find the data. When I un-short it, it recalibrate and works as normal. But Terminal not accessible.

Anyone got any great ideas on how to get ternimal started on this drive?

maybe timing of shorting read channel is not correct.
try shorting at different times.. you should get access to terminal

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Data Recovery Pakistan

Still no luck in trying to get terminal to work on this. I tried all the timings as well. its like its been locked or something. Or the TTL adapter might not be computable.

This is the USB to TTL adapter I am using: - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/USB-To-RS232 ... 2749.l2649

I receive all the messages okay, but no command seems to work.

Shane

Try the terminal adapter with another working drive to be sure.
Bad terminal always lead to misdiagnosis.

Thanks, the adapter works with other drives I have just fine. I was wondering if this drive responds to a lower voltage compared to the 3.3v one.

Shane