U7 40GB ST340012A suddenly not recognised. I was just servicing friends computer when hard drive decided to die. And I was not working on the hard drive! It is not easy these days to find replacement for PATA drive, I decided to take a chance and see what happened with the drive.

It failed to level F. Attempts to load R or Rx returned error FE. I can't say I know you what happened, I came back late night, it was cold, 10C degrees inside the building, power on... and it initialised correctly. Got level T, connected interface little backup (no errors), surface scan, it was many delays and few UNC. I think I made 1>N1, then decided for selfscan N4,,22, as N2 requires more knowledge to patch tables.

It took 16+ hours and it completed with no errors. MHDD scan shows no delays, the slowest delay was 200+ below 50ms, after few scans this number dropped to 33. Perfect condition for such old device.

Strange things is that 3 attributes of SMART go wild after each scan (matter of millions of difference), then suddenly get reset to 0. I looked closer at this and found that each time I read SMART attributes (F8 in MHDD) parameter #01 and #195 (0xC3) increases by one and #7 increases by 5. What is a problem here? May I assume that drive is repaired, can I put it back for the normal use?

SMART attributes are below and full drive info from terminal in the attachment.

No the drive IS NOT repaired and in this condition is unstable. And the procedure you used is wrong but it was a "last resort" without tooling so it's not your fault. You need either dedicated tools - easy - OR write your own SW.

About PATA drives availability.... how many hundreds do you want (from less than 40 MB to 500 GB) ?

Thanks for reply. OK, I didn't waste time in school, I can write my own. What do you mean wrong procedure? T>N2,,22 I tried to avoid is right?

Re: many hundreds, I would have to pay for it, as it died in my hands. No need for larger capacity, just need to make sure that device is stable.

I assume you NEVER repaired U7....

All I can tell you, it was first U7 in my hands. How it relate to anwsering my question?

Found this: http://www.ihdd.ru/forum/seagate-st340014a-i-st380011a-gramotno-zapustit-selfskan-t6632-80.html

Discussion is about Alpine, but it gives idea how to write back OVL and vendor tracks.
In case it is needed.

Learned little bit about proper tooling, using now ST-MEM, so can reload modules after selfscan.
Guessing that the right procedure is N2 rather than N4. Right?
Selfscan has finished at age 50 with health deteriorated on test 20. See log attached.

After extensive testing, no delays, V4 is empty.
Still the same problem with SMART, the same behaviour, oherwise SMART is perfect.

Question remains whether drives has been repaired or not?