Hi everyone,

I am hoping that someone can help with a Hard Drive problem. I have a Seagate ST31000340AS Barracuda 7200.11 1TB drive. It stopped being recognised by any BIOS in various machines I have tried it on (I have had it going for 4 years with no problems whatsoever). The drive spins up, then initialises but I just can't get it to recognise the drive. On a website it suggested buying an RS232 to TTL device and using HyperTerminal, access the drive doing a reset. Everything goes fine, I can perform a loop-back test (inputted characters come back) but as soon as I connect the drive, I get a few characters of garbage. When I press CTRL+Z, I just get a right arrow. Has anyone experienced this problem? Can anyone help? I need to get the data back on it.

Many thanks.

Try your RS232-TTL device with another working drive . Maybe the problem with the ground (need common ground for pc, Hdd and RS232 device). You should get proper output on your terminal screen. Assuming that you know the settings , baud rates, connection details etc.
Checking using another working drive will isolate these issues

If all else fails, contact Seagate. If your firmware is affected by the 7200.11 BSY bug, then you may still be eligible for free data recovery.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.