I went to reinstall OSX on my imac, and it won't install because of a smart failure. I polled the drive with a desktop tool and it returned a fail on too many heat cycles. I cracked it open to pull the drive out, and the dustbunnies have been multiplying like... bunnies. I blew it all out.

the drive operates fine. I did an overnight surface scan and extensive test with two tech tool and drive genius, no errors reported.

this silly smart status is preventing me from using my drive.

I've got a buspirate v3, and I've connected to the drive, but i'm having trouble communicating. I've confirmed the ground, tx and rx. for a short while, I was getting a few random "@" signs when I opened the uart bridge and powered up the drive. I was powering the drive from a separate power supply. for the sake of common ground, I fastened a 3' sata power cable to reach my desk and power from my desktop machine, but now I can't get any return at all.

I was experiencing the @ output at 9600, but I've experimented with all baudrates available during UART setup of the bus pirate. I've tried two different usb cables.

i'm running the bus pirate setup as>
m setup
3 UART
5 9600
1 8, none (data, parity)
1 1 (stop bits)
1 1 (polarity idle 1)
2 2 (normal output 3.3v/g)

W power supply on
(1) start UART bridge
y accept

then connecting the sata power. I was getting 4 or 5 "@" signs sporadically at first, but now I'm not exchanging anything.

does anybody have any experience with this, or a different way to clear the smart data so I can use my dang drive again? apple charges through the nose for replacement drives, and only the apple drives have thermal sensors to communicate with the SMC and control fan speed. I put in another HDD, and the fans ran around 4500rpm and the hdd temp reported 128c.

thanks in advance!

I didn't store (or post) the smart log because I know the result, and it doesn't directly impact what i'm doing.

I will post it if it helps.

I have the pins connected correctly, and I've tried reversing rx/tx countless times. I've also tried the suggest baud rate as well as all of the others.

during the bus pirate setup, there's a polarity option. also, my home-made sata power extension doesn't have an orange wire, but the drive works properly when connected with it.
thoughts?

thanks!

I also went and picked up a rhino usb to serial adapter. should that work instead of the bus pirate? i'm afraid the BP may be overkill and i'm not getting it's too many options set correctly.

another edit, i'm trying on a 7200.9 with 9600 and I still cannot connect.

I must be doing something wrong, but I don't have a firm enough grasp of what i'm doing to figure it out