Hello you engineers,
how to diagnosis if my Seagate Pipeline HD.2 ST3320311CS has bad heads or bad sectors?
My brother said the hard disk has good sectors until LBA 443.050330, after 443.050.330 are all unreadable in MHDD (red warning).

He needs to know how to check heads with the RS232 adapter.
He said he can access to a cleaning room for head change, but he must be sure heads are bad before to do this.

Please help

Not heads, not DIY either.

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If you can read till 443m. lbas,than sure it is not heads but elsewere.

Probably, yes.

But needs proper diagnosis, and proper procedure, rather than "DIY bodging".

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That's fair enough.

I'm just getting fed up its cleaning up after the mess after DIY bodgers have had a go, and then pass it along for proper recovery, after its usually too late

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Data are not so important, only tv series downloads from internet (MacGyver, House, Greys Anatomy, Ally McBeal, ecc), i will not spend hundreds bucks on data recovery, not so important for me.
Just i don't like to spend hours to download all again, my brother has recovered about 50% with DMDE and WinHex, but he says for recover all, needs to access to the unreadable sectors.

He tried with translator regenerator but had no effect, look at this:


Any idea that can help me?

Your brother has almost certainly made the problem 10x more difficult, by misdiagnosing and applying a "one size fits all" fix for a different problem.

Another strike for DIY bodging.

As spildit says, it's a good job this is just illegal pirate downloads and not "proper" data.

I understand that the data isn't important, so DIY bodging is absolutely ok with me in this instance, fill your boots!

It's when so called "PC experts" bodge away with other people's data that is saddening and annoying

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Yep

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It's still possible to get all other data with some other commands in hyperterminal?
can you suggest a few commands, maybe in private so my brother can try them?
At this point I have nothing to lose, thanks

Intervengo io. In una parola, la risposta alla tua richiesta e' NO, per un sacco di motivi.
Ovvero, si potrebbe anche, e non ha a questo punto importanza, vedere di recuperare i tuoi "dati" ma in ogni caso lo dovresti mandare perche' non sono cose da dire ne' in pubblico ne' in privato ma lavori da fare, e non certamente con l'hyperterminal ma con qualcosa di molto piu' complesso e costoso. Se non ha importanza perdere cosa c'e' dentro ma ti interessa recuperare un disco da usare sempre per quello scopo, puoi chiedere a qualcuno di rimettertelo a posto qualunque sia poi il risultato (se necessario si puo' ridurre ma funzionera' ugualmente), ma anche qui non e' gratis. Mi tiro fuori dal discorso.
Altrimenti fattene una ragione e prendine semplicemente un altro.

My turn : in a nutshell the answer to your Q is NO due to many reasons.
It is possible to recover your "data" (no longer important, now) but in any case you have to send the drive in , these are not things to say but jobs to do, not with hyperterm but better with a much more complex and expensive tool. If data is no longer important but you want a working disk for same purpose, ask someone to refurb it regardless of result (if necessary capacity will be cut but it will work), but again it is not free. I call myself out.
Otherwise, live with it and get another drive.

did you try power cycling drive and start scanning sectors after 445,000,000 before applying terminal commands?

I got a feeling one bad sector caused drive to fall over. seen it many times on seagates.

Ditto. But what now that NRG is gone and maybe other stuff is tampered ???

Yes my brother tried it.
Sector after LBA 445.000.000 were already inacessible before translator regeneration, for this reason he thought that was a head issue.

@spildit, if you are thinking about a different flavor of 'm0' , I tell you in advance that it won't work in this state. Other 'ideas' will end with a bricked drive. Oh, and all are destructive for data.

Doesn't work, unfortunately. If you have done it, you should know : temporary and unstable and partial. Surprisingly (!?) , the SD box can do something that work, I have tested it and up now it's OK. But you need the box. Don't give people false illusions...

Ok Spildit, at this point i don't care anymore about data, i will download again those (about 100 GB)
Which command do you suggest to make work again the drive?

This isn't a 1 command job anymore, in fact; not likely any even 5 commands could help you here; as BlackST said, in current state you need something with more complexity then just the terminal commands to complete this recovery now.

HDD UN-regenerator probably did a number on the drive.

I asked how to fix it before i did the translator regenerator, but anyone helped me (only suggestion was "not a DIY").
Now after i did the wrongly translator regeneration (because nobody will suggest me the right commands), everybody says me "this is anymore a 1 command job".
Could one of you suggest the right way before destroing the NRG with m0,2,2,,,,,22?

Hi, sorry you are having problems with your drive. Keep in mind at times the best answer/help is for ones asking help to not work on the drive themselves. Pcimage mentioned that twice at the beginning and that it needs proper diagnosis (which relys on experince and equipment). At that point commands should not have been executed. This issue you have took a bit of time for data recovery experts (and I mean ones who eat and breath data recovery) to solve and implement in the tools.

As for NRG, it is already gone. Since it appears you will not need to recover data, please send it in for repair to reputable expert. There is BlackST, IRS and positivebit.

Maybe it is the best option...