Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 - 2 completely dead drives

[wizard.number.next]

I encountered rather peculiar situation. I got two exactly same drives (ST31000340AS), which died exactly same way. Suddenly they stopped to talk with PC and even Serial Terminal wasn't accessible.any ideas?
One drive was working in server - in it's lifetime it was power-cycled maybe 50 times (at most!). One day it simply stopped to report to PC. End of any kind of communication (even terminal). Both of them were still spinning up.

Any ideas?

[northwind]

It could be a hundred different things, but the fact that they both died the same way (and the same day?) is indeed strange (adding the fact that they still both spin up).

Need to be diagnosed by a pro to tell for sure.

[wizard.number.next]

They died exactly in same way, but not same day. It is half year of difference between them. Different PSU, different motherboard, different SATA data cable, even different CPU and RAM (I do not think that CPU and RAM any thing to do with it any way - it would highly unusual, but it is not impossible). I am just little confused - no response from them at all? If they were spinning it suggest MC and at least part of firmware were working. One of those got completely dismantled, another got fried Smooth chip (my own fault).

Any way I am not going to send remaining HDD to specialist. There is no data on it, which could not be obtained again, so I see no point to send it to specialist.

I just wanted to see, if you could be able to shed some light on subject. I know that it is mostly guessing and I would not take any of it for granted.

By the way, I have surge protector (738J, tens of hundreds AMPs), good PSU (XFX PRO850W fully wired, I am using maybe 250W of it at most!). Still I have big (maybe even huge) surges and spikes in electrical installation (I know about sparks, which are cause by halogen outside), so this could have influence (even if it is highly unlikely). I experienced deaths of 2 motherboard BIOS FLASH chips, 2 GPU BIOS FLASH chips, 1 monitor EEPROM chip - all of it due to sparks in installation! This could be reason for failing drives as well.

[mr_spokk]

[quote="wizard.number.next"]Both of them were still spinning up.quote]

My vote for any kind of FW problem.

[northwind]

My vote for bsy bug

[wizard.number.next]

BSY bug doesn't explain no response from serial terminal.

By sound of drive: normal spin up, normal initialization reads. No response from both serial terminal and SATA data port. Looks like no interface with outside world is working, but internal functions does work.

P.S. my TTL RS232 adaptor is know to be fully working on both 5v and 3.3v.

[mr_spokk]

On some drives you don't get any terminal responce...you need other ways around the problem.

[loki]

On some drives you don't get any terminal responce...you need other ways around the problem.

Like finding & shorting the R/W channels

Loki

[northwind]

BSY bug doesn't explain no response from serial terminal.

NOT TRUE.

[wizard.number.next]

BSY bug doesn't explain no response from serial terminal.

NOT TRUE.

Sorry, I am not expert. It was opinion, not fact. By the way, I cannot access SPI FLASH, which contains firmware. I tried to access it through motherboard (my motherboard have SPI BIOS) and failed. I was able to see chip, manufacturer of it, but not the size nor model. SPI interface is still fully working, as I was able to read my BIOS through it. I cannot verify it, as BIOS have holes, which are filled (MAC, OEM, GPU and stuff like this).