ST3000DM001 7200.12 constantly going into BSY state

[rick.on]

Hello everyone,

Troubleshooting a hard-drive here, and unfortunately it seems to be one of those difficult Seagates.

Drive started to slow down recently, tried getting a cloned image of it using HDDSuperClone, but speeds are very low, since drive keeps constantly going into the BuSY state, speeds varying from 900kb/s to 2.5MB/s.
Data is getting read apparently without major issues though, was able to recover about 4GB from the partial image (using DMDE). Unfortunately it's a 3TB drive and at those speeds it might just kill the drive if running for so long.

Been reading quite a bit, and seems like this firmware is notouriously known to have such issues.
Am looking to get a USB-TTL cable to check drive logs and see if issue is indeed with firmware.

Questions:
- Is there something I should be aware when buying the USB-TTL cable, as in are there any big difference from the different ones out there?
- Anything else besides the HDD log is needed for more context, to attempt assessing if it's indeed the FW issue?
- Most posts mention the 7200.11, are the 7200.12 plagued with the same issue?

Some of the data is important, but not critical enough to justify cost to send to a DR specialist, so am willing to attempt a fix (if logs point to fw likely being the issue).

Hard drive details:
-Seagate Barracude 3TB
-Model ST3000DM001
-FW CC26
-7200.12 (according to Wiki and google searches)
-SN W1F2TLSH
-PN 1CH166-302
-DOM 04/2013

Longer description about drive's history and attempt:
Have been using it as a secondary HD for a quite few years, recently it got close to being full and I decided to do a big cleanup, no issues when deleting files from it at the time, but that's when it started to show signs of a slowdown (perhaps hit a bad spot or sector when doing the cleanup? seeing files were mostly untouched prior to that).
No clicking or scratch noises, was able to see files on Windows/Linux (when issue first started), copying at that time also worked, albeit very slow (50-100 kbps).
BIOS recognizes the drive intermittently, ddrescue/superclone with default settings range from 30kbps to 100kbps, gets a bit faster if using a larger cluster size and reading twice before each reset timeout.
Drive is constantly showing as BSY after each read, then comes back after a soft reset. Often after 3min or so of reading it becomes unresponsive for a bit longer.
Drive was powered off and been sitting since I noticed it was an issue and not just a regular slowdown (apart from the two instances where I booted into HDDSuperClone Live disk to attempt cloning it).

Thanks, guys.
Let me know if you need any more context, or other info that can help guess what the situation is.

[SWM]

"- Most posts mention the 7200.11, are the 7200.12 plagued with the same issue?"
NO!
"Is there something I should be aware when buying the USB-TTL cable, as in are there any big difference from the different ones out there?"
Swith 5 В, 3,3 В, 1,8 В level of TTL signals.
https://electropeak.com/ft232rl-usb-to- ... oTECi2DTc9
https://www.amazon.ca/Converter-Adapter ... B08TX3KTP1

[rick.on]

Thank you, SWM.
I went ahead and purchased the recommended adapter.

I was able to connect using GtkTerm on Linux, here is the result from the:
-F command on level T -- Pastebin link,
-CTRL A and CTRL L (that displays drive info) -- Pastebin link,
-X on level 2 (test read/write resistance) -- Pastebin link

I also attached these as .txt files, in case it's easier to check it that way.

Questions:
-While doing searches here in the forum, I came across these commands, are they also applicable for the same model of drive/firmware I have?
-Any recommendations on next steps or commands to attempt?

Thanks everyone,
I appreciate the help and info provided.

Attachments

Drive info.txt

Drive Info

(8.69 KiB) Downloaded 13 times

head resistance test.txt

Head resistance

(181 Bytes) Downloaded 10 times

F log.txt

T> F

(44.27 KiB) Downloaded 9 times

[SWM]

F3 T>F465,7C
Ctrl R
After Ctrl R, the drive switches to SATA and we begin copying data without switching the power supply. When the power supply is switched, the flag DISABLE_IDLE_ACTIVITY is reset to zero. When working in the terminal, carefully monitor your operating level and observe the capitalization of the commands.

[SWM]

I've never tried it, but maybe it could be done like this (bitwise):
F3 T>F"DAR_ENABLED",0
F3 T>F"OFFLINE_SPARING_ENABLED",0
F3 T>F"DISABLE_IDLE_ACTIVITY",1
Check changes: F3 T>F465
Ctrl R

[rick.on]

Thanks once again, SWM.
That did stabilize the HD a bit and I'm now able to clone it at around 12 to 16MB/s. I did get higher speeds initially, but just for a small period of time.

Suspecting maybe my destination hard drive (one I'm cloning the image into) might be playing a role in the speeds, since when cloning to /dev/null the source HD reaches 140MB/s. I'll test the destination writing speeds later.

It'll take a while to clone, since it's a 3TB drive, but it seems stable enough that it might survive the process.

When the power supply is switched, the flag DISABLE_IDLE_ACTIVITY is reset to zero.

Do you (or anyone else in the forum) know if we can make the flag persistent over reboots? Asking since it'll take me a few days to clone it, won't leave the computer running 24/7.

Thanks,

[SWM]

"Do you (or anyone else in the forum) know if we can make the flag persistent over reboots?"
I don't know a way. I can easily set the bits through the terminal when I turn on HDD again. I don't know a way. I can easily reset the bits in the terminal when turning on the HDD again. And the terminal log shows when the HDD gets stuck on bad blocks. You should skip this section or start cloning from the end of the disk.
p.s. Resetting the HDD to default settings is F,,22.