Ok, A retired teacher brought me her desktop and HDTune reported SMART failures with a few bad sectors in the first several rows so I hooked it up with another drive and started cloning using WinHex. It got about 4 1/2% of the way done and failed (the cloning log goes crazy and reports every sector as bad).
Afterwards, the drive goes clunk, clunk, clunk about ten times and spins down.
So, I pull out my terminal kit and start to figure out what is happening.
If I issue an N1 command, I get:
Failed to load overlay 0000004
LED:00000CC FAddr0028555B (which repeats until I cycle power)

I have 3 questions:
What happened? I'm geussing something very wrong with a sector the drive read caused it to update and corrupt the overlay.
Using Terminal, can I disable smart updating so this doesn't happen again? If so, what command?
And last, I understand this is a common firmware bug in the 7200.12's; but, cannot find the appropriate commands to resolve it. All I need is for it to come ready on the ATA bus one time so I can finish the clone.
What commands should I use?

This woman has almost no money and the drive has her children's (and grandchildren's) pictures on it.
Please help?

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Computer Dinosaur, servicing PC's since 1976 http://www.Computer-Help.Net

Bad head(s) / media damage. Not much to do. Sorry.

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http://www.datasaversllc.com

Is there a terminal command to effectively disable SMART? If so, I'll issue it on any marginal Segates before cloning!

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Computer Dinosaur, servicing PC's since 1976 http://www.Computer-Help.Net

Nothing at your reach without dedicated tools. You can disable SMART OPERATIONS during power on with MHDD , but this won't save you if the drive is unstable, you are using free stuff to clone and during the show the drive decide that had enough...

I was actually asking about the SMART disabling for future jobs, not this one.
WinHex is not free. Its more extensively used for forensics; but, provides a nice report of the unreadable sectors, filling them with UNREADABLESECTOR on the copy which then lets me find which files are damaged.
Are there any terminal command which might bring this drive back online, one more time?

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Computer Dinosaur, servicing PC's since 1976 http://www.Computer-Help.Net

No.
Things are 'a bit' more complex.

Yeah. From what I have discovered, it looks like I'll need a good copy of overlay 4 (one of the ATA's?) and to get the drive to either rewrite it or to use it from an alternate location.
Am I close?

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Computer Dinosaur, servicing PC's since 1976 http://www.Computer-Help.Net

Do any of you know of a good training document fo using Seagate's terminal commands?
I have the reference guide; but, would like to have a better understanding.
This drive, by the way, cloned the first 20.9 million sectors with only one error so I don't think I have a bad head.
I think overlay 4 or the pointer to it got corrupted.

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Computer Dinosaur, servicing PC's since 1976 http://www.Computer-Help.Net

I just can say that if you really want to offer this kind of services (and get revenue) you have to get a PC3000 UDMA or so (toys don't count and don't do the job, usually) and the necessary knowledge about how these drives work.
This means several thousand $.

This is necessary to put you at safe regarding FW and to let you work on it (the main concern would be the first part).

Unfortunately this argument it's our bread and butter, too.

For now, unless you are very lucky and you get some result with tinkering (and with the associated risks) the best solution would be outsource.

How much if I ship it to you?
I have been doing data recovery since 1978 (on cassette tapes, then floppies, then hard drives) and started doing head swaps in the early 1980's (which stopped being effective about 2002); but, I frankly don't get enough business to justify $13,000 USD for a PC-3000. 90+ percent of the time, a cloning and trivial filesystem repair recover the data.

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Computer Dinosaur, servicing PC's since 1976 http://www.Computer-Help.Net

How reliable is Salvation Data's HDD Doctor?

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Computer Dinosaur, servicing PC's since 1976 http://www.Computer-Help.Net

I sometimes wonder if I get understood....
RE-READ my answer some posts ago.