What is the Seagate Utility in PC-3000 good for? Nothing?

[zed]

Hi All,

I own a PC-3000 UDMA and used to have a PC-3000 PCI for a couple of years. Other than password removal i never found any reason to use the PC-3000 to troubleshoot or repair hard drive problems.

I mainly use my PC-3000 for Firmware problems with Maxtor and WD hard disks. I have unlocked a few password protected Seagte disks but in find the PC-3000 very hard to use for the Seagate utility.

Most of the time when i get a Seagate hard disk which is faulty the drive powers up, detectes but reports UNC errors/bad sectors and using Data Extractor i copy any critical files i can if possible. Otherwise the Terminal mode has not been easy to learn and i have not found the ways to 'repair' a drive as i have not found any Segate HDD with a need to repair the firmware as far as i know.

My question is, from your experience - what kind of problems can the PC-3000 be used for with Seagate drives?

Thanks,
Zed.

[coffeebean]

Hi Zed,

Agreed, Acelab did not make user friendly manual for Seagate.
Seagate drives 95% heads, media problem, so you can see that
opportunity for FW repair very small with this drives.

However, there are some method for starting Seagate from "Safe Mode",
and also some opportunity for clearing SMART when SA media is still good.

Mostly PC3000 for Seagate (and any Rx Tx device and program) is very useful
for diagnostics to determine faults.

Lately I notice that Seagate slims develope media faults in SA mostly Vendor Track
and mostly in SMART sectors.

Success!!

[zed]

coffeebean, in the cases you have used he PC-3000 to 'repair' a Seagate disk and recover the data, what features did you use?

Was it a terminal command to 'clear smart' or something like this? I have read the PC-3000 manual and tried many times.

For example, the one you had with bad sectors in the SA, how did you find this out? (i.e what command did you use in PC-3000's Seagate tool?) and how did you fix this?

I don't explain you to teach me everything, i'm simply looking for an example of the kind of problem that can be fixed.

For example, i have had a Seagate IDE 3.5" HDD with suspected bad heads (i.e lots of UNC errors reports, cannot copy the files and DE cannot see the folder structure and the drive makes a ticking sound (like a clock's seconds ticking) as it's attempting to re-try reading sectors. This was sent to 'Seagate Data Recovery', they told the client it was a head problem but when it came back the drive's label was not even removed or peeled back. So i suspect either it was a PCB problem or a firmware related problem. I know this as my client told me about this and i looked at the disk to confirm.

So i suspect some of these 'suspected head problems' with Seagate drives may actually be able to be solved in other ways.

Thanks coffeebean .
Zed

[prodata]

Seagate is just some of complicated drive

I think before we try to run more deeply in seagate drive. there is lot of seagate variable need to be understand Not just LEVEL Command. but All this variable still have no description. even there is a manual of ALL LEVEL command. Without understand ALL the variable, and fully description of the variable manual will be useless.

such :
physical Cyl VS Gray Cylinder
MUX Variable
NIWOT variable
Adaptive Data variable
MR HEad Bias Varible
and still so many variable.
and the most important one is how we understand the Log come out from the terminal report.

[beto]

yes and another the way to access sectors and zones called "Niwot" acess to translate to LBA

Best regards

[harddrivespecialist]

zed,

did you use PC-3000 support?
Is it helpfull?

[TerraNova]

unfortunately the support is not as I expected, Salvationdata support is excellent in my opinion.

[zed]

Yes, ace labs support is pretty crap. They usually only answer easy questions. any tricky questions are ignored or never responsed to in my experience. If they know the answer they are usually fast and helpful.

[zebong]

Hi Guys,

I have a PC3kudma, brand new, and i am having a problem with the SEAGATE MAXTOR disk off 1TB that appear 0MB in th bios.

i try to connect via com port, but the terminal it appers some "trash", also try that with a brand new disk the same size 1TB and also nothing new.

Anyone have any ideia how can i repair the service area and get the disk with 1TB.

Thanks
Jose

[TerraNova]

drive is not supported yet.

[zebong]

Thanks terranova,

do you know a way to communicate with the disk ?

Jose

[suntom]

Hi All,

I own a PC-3000 UDMA and used to have a PC-3000 PCI for a couple of years. Other than password removal i never found any reason to use the PC-3000 to troubleshoot or repair hard drive problems.

I mainly use my PC-3000 for Firmware problems with Maxtor and WD hard disks. I have unlocked a few password protected Seagte disks but in find the PC-3000 very hard to use for the Seagate utility.

Most of the time when i get a Seagate hard disk which is faulty the drive powers up, detectes but reports UNC errors/bad sectors and using Data Extractor i copy any critical files i can if possible. Otherwise the Terminal mode has not been easy to learn and i have not found the ways to 'repair' a drive as i have not found any Segate HDD with a need to repair the firmware as far as i know.

My question is, from your experience - what kind of problems can the PC-3000 be used for with Seagate drives?

Thanks,
Zed.

write the fw to disk

only vendor,power off / on

the lock disk will unlock

[lukehealey]

Hi Guys,

I have a PC3kudma, brand new, and i am having a problem with the SEAGATE MAXTOR disk off 1TB that appear 0MB in th bios.

i try to connect via com port, but the terminal it appers some "trash", also try that with a brand new disk the same size 1TB and also nothing new.

Anyone have any ideia how can i repair the service area and get the disk with 1TB.

Thanks
Jose

You need to set the baud rate correctly (9600) - Try the different settings (F4) - most use 9600baud.