I have this drive and I am pretty sure the controller is dead. The drive spins up, sounds good, but no computer can detect it at all.

I wanted to switch the PCB, but as Murphy's Law would have it, the only ones I can find are Firmware 3.01 and 3.03. Does anyone know the chances of one of these ohter firmware's working on this drive?

Any idea what it could be? This drive was part of an External USB closure. Yesterday, the drive stopped being detected when I plugged it in. After trying it on 3 different PCs and with a different USB cable, I took the drive out of the case and tried it via IDE.

I have tried Master, Slave, and Cable Select on 2 PC's, but the BIOS just won't see the drive. Tried using File Scavenger in Windows, but that does no good if you can't see the drive. Tried Fdisk and Seagate tools, none of which can see the drive.

I have dealt with drives dieing in the past, but they usually don't spin up at all, or they turn on and give those horrible clunking and grinding noises. This one spins up with no problem at all, but the BIOS of two PC's just won't see it.

If it's not the Controller, does anyone have any ideas? Considering the fact that the spin up sounds good, I have to assume that the data is still recoverable.

Somebody please corect me if I am wrong !!!

If you have identical pcb for this Seagate but only the firmware is different than you can unsolder the Rom from dead drive, solder it on the good PCB and let's see...
I have done this several times and it worked for me.
All you need is a hot air gun and a very good hand.
Let us know.

Gill,

I worked several time for me too !!! The read and write rom on PC3K PCI didn't .

To help a bit more sometime depending on the generation there is two 8-pins chip on the controller best way to isolate witch one is the rom is to google the part number of both chip and find out witch one is a rom. When you can see the atmel logo this is generally the rom chip.

Regards

_________________
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Francis Parent-Valiquette
http://www.tux-tech.ca/

Of course, if it is the rom chip that's busted, I'd be in trouble. Also, I have seen the board be ever so slightly different on different firmware models. I am just wondering if there difference between 3.02 to 3.03 would make it not work. The unsoldering the rom chip may be worth a shot though. I gotta stay away from coffee for about 2 days to steady my hand for these things.

i have the same problem with the same drive. and i have doubts about geting a spare drive as a donor. in this sites says that the donor must match in fimrware and country, but im not shure what country is this one. how can i find out? if you fix the drive , or recover the data, please letme know how.