Against better judgement, from a customer point of view, I ignored reports on poor quality of Seagate 500GB IDE drives
and purchased one. (And later one extra for parts.)
After a couple of months it died like many of the reports had forseen.
I'm not sure what's on it, but mostly rubbish and useless stuff I guess.
There might be 20 photos from my camera that I have not found on any of my backups,
but I don't remember what I have taken pictures of, so they are probably not so important.

Bad disk: Barracuda 7200.10 IDE.
S/N 5QG1T8M3
ST3500630A
P/N 9BJ046 - 305
Firmware: 3.AAE
Date Code: 08433
Site Code: WU

The disk now hangs some computers in BIOS, and if passed is totally invisible to BIOS and Seagate tools.
Using USB cabinets, also no disk is discovered.
The disk spins up normally, and makes one normal sounding read sound and thats it. Nothing more.
The bad disks circuit board is working on another disk without problem.
The other disks circuit board on the bad disk makes no difference.

Yesterday I discovered instructions on how to fix problems through serial communication on newer SATA disks.
My main hobby is serial diagnose communication research on cars engine control units, so this sounded interesting.

Are there any serial commands that could give more information on what is wrong with my disk?

Hi,

The bad quality Seagate were largely 7200.11. But you can google for the
hardware solution USB-TTL serial port (CP2102 chip) and connect this to your 7200.10.

Just power on and you will get some response from the 7200.10 in a terminal program.
You can then try some simple commands like

; and . and post the results here.

Thank you,

I'll clear some space on my desk, or floor, and give it a try.

First results:

Reset
4096k x 32 DRAM
GALAXY - 1_Disk S-6D 09-22-06_15:48

Buzz HM SFI
!
(P)PATA Reset
DiskAccess ReadSector EC=47 at ffffffff.00.0002
DiskAccess ReadSector EC=47 at ffffffff.00.0002

Read Ver Retrys
DiskAccess ReadSector EC=47 at ffffffff.00.0002

Read Ver Retrys
DiskAccess ReadSector EC=47 at ffffffff.00.0002

Read Ver Retrys
DiskAccess ReadSector EC=47 at ffffffff.00.0002

Read Ver Retrys
DiskAccess ReadSector EC=47 at ffffffff.00.0002

Read Ver Failure!
DiskAccess ReadSector EC=47 at ffffffff.00.022b
Failed sys sect. write! Nwt Er 00 RdWr 15f28.00.022b
DiskAccess ReadSector EC=47 at ffffffff.00.0080
DiskAccess ReadSector EC=47 at ffffffff.00.0080
Unable To Load Overlay 01|000A

T>;Age=50 Type=06 MxCyl=21135 MxHd=5 MxSct=000 BSz=016M TCode=04050503 ThermFlts=0000
.Pgm=00 Trk=FFFFF(15F24:00[17033]).0(0).080(080) Zn=E Err=00 ErCt=0000 Hlth=0008
CHlth=0000 Ready LBA=000006A2

Hi somad,

You did that quickly, well done.

DiskAccess ReadSector error indicates that head 0 cannot
read one of SMART sectors (0002) and other sectors (Overlay).
Also head 0 writing has a problem.

This drive is failing and could reach total failure state shortly,
due to heads/media problem. Possible solution is heads swap
for data recovery, but this could be problematical and might require
"low-level" access to drive(after head swap) to have better chance
to retrieving data.