Hello,

I have a Seagate ST2000DM001 PN: 1CH164 - 302 FW: CC26 that is acting rather weird. Let me tell you the story.

I recently moved to the US, and so, I brought my HDD with me. I brought it in my backpack (in airplane, carry-on) to keep it safe from shocks. However, I didn't put it inside a anti-static bag; I just put it inside my backpack (I'm mentioning this because maybe the statics could have damaged the HDD?). Once in the US, I bought a Plugable USB3 SATA dock to read the drive. The first time I used it, the HDD was recognized ok and then my laptop hanged up. At that time I though the laptop hanged up because I was installing some software while connecting the HDD and the ram just got full, so I just reset my laptop, but didn't connect the HDD again at that time because I was just trying the dock and because I saw the HDD being recognized I was not thinking about a HDD failure.

A couple weeks later, I connected the HDD to get some info out of it. This time, the drive was not recognized by the dock. I thought the dock was the problem, but after reading dmesg logs, and trying other HDDs with the dock I realized that the dock was working fine. Moreover, during the debug process, I found that after a while, after some dock's disconnects/connects cycles, my HDD got recognized and I could even read the filesystem. However, data transfer was totally unstable and extremely slow. I got access to a desktop computer's SATA port to try to diagnose the HDD further. However, when connected to the PC, the BIOS would not recognize the drive most of the time and the would freeze for a while.

With this evidence, and because no clicking sounds or mechanical issues are evident, I'm thinking it is something with the logic board. Visual inspection of the board doesn't show any sign of bad electronics (no smell or blown components). I don't have a multimeter yet so I haven't tested any voltages or diodes. I, however, have a Bus Pirate and hence tried to at least connect to the serial console (I was actually trying to read the SMART data). I hooked up to the Bus Pirate in transparent bridge mode at 38400 baud, but, to my surprise, the drive does not respond. Immediately after power up, the HDD just writes some random characters to the serial port and doesn't react to the Control+z command.

Do you think it is a logic board issue? If so, would you recommend a board swap with http://www.hdd-parts.com/?

I would appreciate any feedback and ideas regarding this. Thanks a lot!

I do not think PCB problemas.
The most probably problm héroe muy be heads problemas. Maybe fw por media problemas toó, but needed skilss. And tool to test it.

I think no DIY

Random characters ? Flow control was disabled and ground connected ? Check connections and post log here

Hi Jano,

Thanks for your prompt answer.

As I said in the description, I tried to access the console through TTL connection. I wired everything so that the pin nearest to the SATA port was RX, the next one TX and the last one GND, and left the 4th pin unconnected (RX and TX from the hard drive perspective). Immediately after I apply power to the hdd, I just receive random characters in the terminal window (Im using PuTTY by the way). Im going to try again tomorrow and show you the actual output plus some pictures of the logic board.

Thanks!

I'm struggling with your drive's bigger sister, the ST3000DM001 and have a similar serial terminal problem: it does not talk to me at all. Others seem to get it working with a TTL cable and putty. Please post an update when and how you get it working!

Hello,

7200.14 and some 7200.12 have a 1.8V pcb, so USB to RS232 cable (5V or 3.3V) doesn't work.
I tried this change (kindle = hdd) :



And my cable works fine with a 10K resistor and a 1N4148 diode.

Very clever. Many thanks.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Hi guys!

I rechecked everything and found that the jumper cable I was using was not doing a good connection. Anyway, now I can connect to the drive and access the ASCII Diag mode. I'm attaching some pics of the board and a screenshot of the terminal. Now I'm going to search the forums and look for some diagnostic procedure.

Thanks!

Ok.

So I've been dumping the logs and g-lists. V1 and V3 have excessively huge lists. V4 gives a big list and then just gives a Diag error. The SMART attributes look high also. So I guess the hard drive is a very bad shape.

What I really don't understand is why is the BIOS not recognizing the drive? If it is only bad sectors, why is the drive not being seen?

I'm attaching some screenshots.

So, I managed to get the first lines from the V4 output before the DiagError 0x27 kicks in. I see there are a lot of reassigned sectors and there are a lot pending.

Do not try the 7200.11 fix commands or other commands without properly understanding the problem with your drive.

your drive may have firmware (or heads) issue, if data is important do not randomly try terminal fix commands. you will make matters worse. A pro will be able to get your data safely without much cost either

Read the forum for problems due to 7200.11 fix commands tried on these drives

F3 7>X for testing heads
F3 T>V40 will give you the NRG list

Hi Sathyan,

Yes, I'm well aware that I cant just write any commands like a crazy guy. I've been just reading logs and dumping lists in order to get an idea of whats happening.

I've already tested the heads with F3 7>X. They look ok (the all have the approximate same resistance). And F3 T>V40 gives no error and no entries.

Hi despedes,

I am trying to diagnose the very same hard drive with firmware CC24. It was in a stationary DELL workstation, never got moved, is less than a year old. At one point during a reboot the BIOS hang up and could not recognize the hard drive anymore. I am trying to understand what happened and if there are chances to recover some data.

I have successfully connected to the terminal. I can not reach the F3 prompt via CTRL-z though.
Output (putty) is:

C!¨ë0x40M
Spin Up
Trans.

Spin Up
SpinOK
(P) SATA Reset

There it stops.
I can see in your first "success" post that you got to the same point. In the next post you add logs etc.. How did you get to the prompt? Did you take any further steps after diagnosis?

Thanks for your answer.

It's what you get with Prolific PL-2303HX bridge cable, before modification with diode an resistor (don't remember if I could get prompt or not). But after modification, all is fine with ST2000DM001.

Thanks for your hint, I will try. Surprising to me though as the PL-2303HX can handle 1.8V according to the spec sheet! I measured the HDD tx/rx voltage and I confirmed it is 1.8V.

Pin #4 of the chip (VDD_325) is the "Power Supply for Serial I/O Pins". Ideally it should be powered from a separate supply, in your case +1.8V. A 2.5V supply will probably be OK.

I suspect that most designs simply loop the device's 3.3V output pin (VO_33, pin #17) back to the VDD_325 pin. This means that the device defaults to using its own internal 3.3V regulator for the serial I/O.

If I had a bridge based on this chip, I would modify it by adding 2.5V and 1.8V LDO regulators, and use jumpers or a selector switch to choose between the 3 possible supply voltages.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Maybe, but add diode and resistor is so simple and cheap, and it's still working for 7200.11.

Agreed, and I do appreciate MacGyver solutions. :-)

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Aesebu -

I read your posts on hardware.fr via Google translate... I knew already before NOT to use commands from the 7200.11 / .12 series, still I am looking on the web for information what to do on the F3 prompt of a 7200.14 HDD...
Latest info I found was the command sequence from your french posting:

F0A2,00,22
F01E4,00,22
F057C, 043C, 22

What could you recommend based on your experience?
Just got resistors / diodes today, will work on the TTL adapter in the following days when I find a minute...

We have already discarded the data on the ST2000DM001 drive - maybe we can at least learn something from it. If we can get back on it, well then chapeau - two weeks of super computing data saved and you will for sure get a beer when I will be in France next time .

Unfortunately, I am a beginner in data recovery. The command sequence comes from here ...

I only know very well BSY error on 7200.11 (sold at low prices a lot of handmade "ready to use" usb cable ).

However, I have 2 ST2000DM001 what do not work (no data to recover). The first is clicking, nothing to do I think, and no information currently for the other HDD.