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

[codepoet47]

Hello,

I have an old Seagate hard drive that has been malfunctioning, and I'd like to get the data from it. It's a Seagate ST351A/X hard drive with 42mb of space. Specifications are here:
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-dri...SL-IDE-AT.html

The specific problem is that after turning on the machine, I hear a series of clicks, and then the front LED flashes 8 times. The computer's BIOS does not recognize the drive as attached. I have a video of it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ty5HYJhNsg

According to the specification page above, the 8 LED blinks means "Error uploading RAM". Does anyone know what that could mean and what if anything I could do about it? I'd appreciate any information or pointers.

Thanks!

[fzabkar]

I miss those good old days when microprocessors not only detected errors, but actually reported them to the user.

That said, I don't know whether the data been uploaded into RAM is being retrieved from the platters, or whether it is coming from the uP.

It might be worth jumpering the drive for factory test mode. That should exercise the voice coil servo, assuming the POST failure doesn't interfere with the test.

Otherwise you could disconnect the motor and see whether the POST fails during an earlier test.

Could you upload detailed photos of both sides of the PCB to a file sharing service?

[Samuel2K]

Hi there!

I know this post is very old. However, I would like to know how did you end up with this hard disk? Since, I have exactly the same problem!

I have read in two different places (http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-drives-hdd/seagate/ST351A-43MB-3-5-SL-IDE-AT.html), eight times blinking means "Error uploading RAM".

In these links:

http://www.redhill.net.au/d/16.php

http://www.olddiscdrives.go.ro/ide.htm

People say this particular model of disk, can be easily blew up by a wrong jumpering. I think this is probably what I did, however, I think my disk is not working not due to a wrong jumpering but due to that I connected the drive as slave alone without a master.

There's no doubt that the best jumpering setting can be found here:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/dta/18814/00000003.htm

However, I cannot say they worked for me, since I found that website after my disk stopped working.

Hope to get an answer from you, or from anyone. I'm thinking about buying a similar disk at ebay, just because I wanna hear the unforgetable sound of this drive once againg.

This website: http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/ also suggest to buy a similar drive and to use its controller board to recover the data.. It's something i would like to try out to recover my highschool games and files..

Best regards..
Samuel