Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[aa]

You can contact Wayman Ng who unbricked my drive for < $100. His contact info is on his twitter pg:

http://twitter.com/daskinkaid

[gcliv1984]

I also can vouch for Wayman Ng (http://twitter.com/daskinkaid).....he unbricked my 7200.11 and returned it same day. Verified my data, communicated every step of the way. I heartily endorse him if you have this issue with the Seagate 7200.11!

[arhounder]

Hi , all i am really sorry for this delay , i contact Seagate and submit a case and they Took my H.D.D and fix it and send it back "all for free"

I am from Egypt  "it was on Sep 2009"

#Really much apprechiated from Seagate Service

[Kansas Man]

My Seagate 7200.11 750GB ST3750330AS is not longer visible in my computer bios. I did all the usual troubleshooting (swapping wires, swapping ports, etc.). I was about to stick it in the freezer before finding this thread today, December 4, 2009. So, thanks to the original poster.

I of course had no idea about the problem with this hard drive and the need to upgrade the firmware (from SD15) as described here.

I am disappointed that Seagate will not repair/save the data on OEM versions of the hard drive. I bought mine at Future Shop (or maybe Best Buy) in Canada and didn't realize it was OEM.

I am relieved to learn that many people have had success with Wayman Ng (http://twitter.com/daskinkaid) and may try him as the cost of ~$100 seems reasonable.

But before doing so, here's what I still need to know:

Once the hard drive goes missing from the bios, is there any chance it will re-appear? Will the cooling-it-in-the-freezer thing work with the known problem with this hard drive? Because if it does bring it back to life temporarily, then it should buy me enough time to run the firmware update. What do you think?

[Chrizz_L]

Once the hard drive goes missing from the bios, is there any chance it will re-appear? Will the cooling-it-in-the-freezer thing work with the known problem with this hard drive?

NEVER EVER FREEZE YOUR DISKS!!!! IT CAN DAMAGE INTERNAL PARTS!!! Sorry for the CAPS but this is a rumor ppl say it fixes the disk but never ever do that in your life!
Its like freezing in a human body it will die.

[IvoMV]

Hi.

I'm going through this process right now - this thread was useful for me, and as I'm finding my steps to be somewhat different from the original poster (thanks for creating the thread, by the way) I decided to write my own progress (to not clutter the thread I intend to edit this post to add the steps as I go through, if the forum lets me edit the post at least).

I'm in Europe and Seagate tech support by phone here only functions on weekdays. As it is Saturday I looked at the option of chat - which was available from around 14:00 of my local time (there are other hours for weekdays, but it seems to be based in the U.S. for non-weekdays - I'm really glad this option was there). See here:

http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/chat/supportchat_en.html

After filling in some information on the Chat, I was assigned rather quickly someone to chat with (I think I did not even wait 3 minutes). I outlined my problem, was asked some questions about how the disk was behaving (I guess he wanted to confirm I had gone through the troubleshooting). He forwarded me to contact I365, and gave me a case #.

As it is still Saturday I took the opportunity to ask him if I should wait until Monday to contact the European branches of I365 (also only answering phones on weekdays) - he suggested I try e-mail as they are usually fast in replying.

I tried to follow schroed's procedure of "submit a case" but the form I eventually got to ("Evaluation Request Form) had options that I had to fill in and wasn't sure of - which made me prefer to contact I365 before proceeding "on my own. For reference the form is here:

https://services.seagate.com/online_request_form.aspx

If I365 replies before Monday, great. If not I can just phone them on Monday and post about it here as it happens.

Ivo.

[IvoMV]

I phoned the Paris site this morning a few minutes after it opened. After answering my phone and briefly explaining the issue, I got forwarded to a technician. So I once again explained the issue and the technician directed me to the "Submit a case" form I had been looking at before. I just confirmed with him what option I should select, and it is indeed the "Priority" one that takes 2 to 5 days. The techie asked me where I was, and based on that and the kind of problem (EProm issue) told me to select to send to the Amsterdam site and that a TNT courier would arrange to pick it up.

So I filled out the form online, submitted, got some e-mail with instructions - including a page to print out with some of the stuff I filled out in the form, case number and so on. There were also packing instructions. I packed the drive inside an anti-static bag with a bunch of white foam boards, with some cm thick padding all around (I don't know the precise name of the rigid foam in English, but I suspect it is expanded polystyrene) - I was a bit surprised as the instructions said not to use bubble wrap and other stuff like that to be sure the drive wouldn't move inside the box, but I complied and used the relatively rigid stuff as padding.

Some hours later the courier called and a pick up was arranged. I presume that this part depends a bit on whether it is TNT or UPS or whoever that handles it, it's not really specific to Seagate.

EDIT: the drive arrived the next day (the 15th) in Amsterdam and today (the 16th) in the morning I got a mail that it was going to be shipped back. I was surprised as I was expecting to hear from the recovery team about the process, so I even thought they were just sending it back without doing nothing or just replacing it with a different one - I was further worried as the case "vanished" from the "My cases" on the I365 where I was monitoring it. A quick phone call put me at ease, I gave the person the reference and was told that my data was recovered and that the same drive is coming back to me and should arrive. I eagerly anticipate it and perhaps tomorrow morning will edit this again from my desktop, running with the returned hard drive's operating system.

Ivo.

Message Edited by IvoMV on 12-16-2009 02:17 PM

[IvoMV]

My drive arrived yesterday (Thursday the 17th) at around 12:00 local time. Consider that the courier picked it up at 18:00 or so on Monday (the 14th). As expected, the data is all as I left it, SeaTools confirmed that the drive already has the SD1A firmware flashed.

I'd like to add that my drive is OEM - I was afraid that would have been a problem given some reports that Seagate wasn't extendeding their free recovery to these cases (although I note also that I got my drive in a store as a separate component with firmware SD15 - which leads me to think that maybe Seagate refused only to help customers that had OEM drives as part of a pre-built computer, from HP or other vendors like that which may even have slightly different firmwares).

So now there is another success story about this issue in the forums and hopefully more people that have unfortunately ran into this problem can feel confident to try to have it fixed by Seagate, with a relatively minimal period without their drives and data.

I can't comment much on the "serial" cable + hyperterminal approach (either using an adapted Nokia CA-42 cable or specifically serial to TTL converter or whatever): it is probably a good solution for many, as your drive will always be with you and it may be that you can get the data back in less than what it takes to ship to Seagate and get it back. But finding the specific stuff might not be fast as most people are not familiar with electronic component stores in their area and some of the stuff you need is a bit specific.

If my case is not atypical I think it would be fair to say that Seagate is helping out a portion of their customers - granted, the error should have been detected on testing and I'm not so sure they are advertising the issue and their offer of free recover adequately).

Ivo.

[guptavis]

I congratulate you on getting your data back. But you must consider yourself very lucky.

I , like many others have lost irreplaceable data due to seagate's denial of data recovery for their own disk failing within 6 months of purchase.

If i were you i would buy lottery tickets to see if im as lucky over there as well

[nolimitken]

Contacted Wayman through e-mail, met up at his place yesterday and unbricked my seagate 7200 in less than 10 mins!!! Very trustworthy and friendly. All data has been recovered!!