So i bought a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB drive P/N: 9BX158-302 and FW of SD14 from best buy a couple years ago and it has been working like a champ up until yesterday evening when my computer just became retardedly slow. I keep my computer clean all the time, defrags every week. The issues i had were *all a sudden* my comp wasnt registering any of my actions I.e opening programs or shutting down etc..i finally just waited it out after hitting restart and after 15 mins the comp finally restarted, the drive was not recognized by the bios, no post errors or anything but as soon as it was supposed to show the windows loading screen, nadda happened..it was hung up. I then tried safe mode with the same symptoms and i was stuck without being about to get my comp back up at all..i was upset, had no idea if i caught a virus or what not. I decided after all the frustration to just reformat and install windows again on my two raptors that were raided together, my seagate was a storage drive only, i did not do any reformatting or erasing on it. I disconnected the drive just out of curiousity and sure enough the system booted up just fine and worked like a champ, i then reconnected the drive and the symptoms came back, someitmes when i reconnect the drive back up with the sata cable the comp just reboots and then other times it just hangs up the comp again. I dl seagate tools to try to find anything wrong with the drive while connected but it takes sooo long for the comp to sea it that nothing happens it seems. The drive spins up when connected to power and then starts clicking for a bit then shuts off..anytime i connect the sata cable to it..the comp just BSOD's...

Im about to order the ca 42 cable and go that route..never used putty before and im on win 7. I also have a new replacement fromt the warranty coming and i wanted to try to swap the pcbs out since i saw a vid on youtube of a successful repair with the clicking problem.

Im kinda confused about building the cable though, do i need to buy pins after stripping the wires?

thanks for any help..











thanks for any help.
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If it is clicking then spinning down it is most likely a bad head (reading mechanism in the drive). It is possible it is a firmware issue, but i highly doubt it.

If it is a bad head then it is not something you can do... well you can try but i would guarantee you will fail at it.

I would find a DR firm in your area to see if they can diag it out for you. Most reputable dr firms will give you a free diagnosis on the drive.

thanks for the quick reply, im going to go that route if i cant do it myself. I want to get the cable and pcb swap things done first.

When you make the cable from the nokia one, where are the pins coming from that connect to the drive? just curious.

Board swaps on these drives will not work. They have unique adaptive information on them. There is a firmware chip that needs to be swapped from the bad drive board to the donor board.

ugh, great.

Also in the 100's.. of 7200.11 drives i have worked in since they came out i would say i could count on 1 hand that were a board issue and that board issue was that it was fried and would not power the drive anymore. So i would highly doubt your board is the issue.

There is a link on the boards here that tell you how to make a Terminal cable so you can get a terminal response from the drive and see what the problem is... meaning you can post the results here and we can tell you what the issue is.

Also there are a couple value members on here that are in Virginia that may be able to help you out.

Ok thanks for the help, i think im going to contact one of the va guys on here to see if i can pay them to look at it.

do you by chance know any of the members names who might care to help me in VA? my new drive is arriving tomorrow but i have tons of pics on this drive i dont want to lose.

here are two pics of the pcb, the back pads for the SMOOTH chip and the other look discolored a bit, maybe burnt?

PCB looks fine. To confirm, if the drive is clicking, it's highly probable that it's a head failure. There is one model of 7200.11 that clicks as a result of a system area failure. Perhaps you can post the full drive model...e.g. ST31000xxxxxxx

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Data Recovery Ireland

The part number from the 1st post points it to being a ST31000340AS

Yes that is the correct number on the drive.

Lynkdev,

I'd say read and listen to the guys here in the forum. They'll not steer you wrong.