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

[The Hammer]

Hi I am just trying to get confirmation on what exactly my problem is with my drive.  Its a 500gb ST3500320AS  with the Firmware SD15 on it originally.  Serialnumber is 9QM1TTWY if thats relevant

I purchased it on April 21st 2008.  
It recently stopped working entirely without any sort of warning.  I believe it is the dreaded firmware issue but I am not 100% sure.  I've done my homework(hours of it)  and I just want to confirm that the 0 LBA problem is infact what I have.

My drive does the following things:

1) It shows up in the BIOS as a 0gb drive.

2) The BIOS states " Master hard disk error" on boot

3) Windows sees the drive in device manager but cannot initialize it nor see any capacity for the drive.

4)It spins and sounds perfectly normal.

I have tried many data recovery softwares but none work as they all dont recognize the drive because it "has no size".

I contacted seagate support and they instructed me to update my firmware.  I did so,  and the drive shows up in  Drive Detect with the correct model number and new firmware version SD1A. But the drive still gives all the same errors and shows up at 0gb and is still completely unuseable and I cannot get and data off it.

Does this sound like the 0 LBA error that seems so common?

I replyed to seagate telling them that the firmware update diddnt help and they told me I could exchange it(all very well and good, I knew that already and wouldnt have bothered to message them if thats all i wanted to do).

I want my data recovered.  Or some free fix so that i can get it off.  

I've read a lot about people receiving free data recovery services. But I'm not sure how to inquire into that and whether or not they still do it. 

Any help anyone could provide would be greatly appreciated.

[fzabkar]

Here are repair procedures for Seagate 7200.11 drives:

http://sites.google.com/site/seagatefix/

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=128807

The first link has a fix for the BSY bug, whereas the second has fixes for both the 0 LBA and BSY problems.

See the following technical bulletin:

http://atulchitnis.net/files/seagate.pdf

BTW, I haven't heard of anyone applying the firmware upgrade *before* fixing the drive.

In fact, before you do anything more, it would be interesting if you could run SeaTools for Windows. After doing so, look for a file named 9QM1TTWY.ATA in your SeaTools folder. This will contain the 512 bytes of information returned by the drive in response to an ATA Identify Device command. Could you then upload the file to a file hosting service?

Message Edited by fzabkar on 26-10-2009 08:45 PM

[The Hammer]

Yeah I am aware of those procedures I just want to know that this problem I have is actually one of the ones that they fix.

I was told to apply the firmware by seagate. And that diddnt help.

 I can run Seatools for windows, but none of the tests pass.  I see the file that you speak of  in the Seatools folder but I dont understand what you want me to do  with it and for what purpose?

[fzabkar]

I'm only an end user, but AFAICT the symptoms you describe are consistent with the 0 LBA bug. However, I'm watching a thread where the owner of a 7200.12 series drive is also seeing a 0 LBA problem, but that one is not bug related. I don't know how you can determine whether your drive is affected, other than by applying the repair procedure. The reason I requested those 512 bytes of Identify Device information is that they may hold a clue as to what is wrong. If you send me a private message, I can arrange to upload your data to my web space for the group members to analyse.

[fzabkar]

Here is your file:

http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/IDE-identify/9QM1TTWY.ata

... and here it is in text form:

http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/IDE-identify/9QM1TTWY.txt

I don't see much that is unusual apart from words 100-103 which are telling you that the drive has 0 LBAs.

Word 217 is indicating that the drive's rated RPM is 0x2000, ie 8192 RPM (it should be 7200 RPM ???).

The documentation for the Identify Device data block can be found in section 7.16 of the following document:

Working Draft AT Attachment 8 - ATA/ATAPI Command Set (ATA8-ACS):

http://www.t13.org/Documents/UploadedDocuments/docs2008/D1699r6a-ATA8-ACS.pdf

Words 129-159 are defined as "Vendor specific", so perhaps there is some useful information there.

For example, word 135 has a value of 0x0140 which is 320 in decimal. According to Seagate's bulletin, 320 is the error log count that triggers the bug. This could be a complete red herring, though.

If you can retrieve a sensible SMART report, that would confirm that your drive is able to read data from the platters. Also, the fact that you were able to download firmware to it would suggest that at least part of the hidden System Area on the platters is OK. This is because the bulk of the firmware is written to the platters.

The bottom line is, though, that I haven't been able to help you determine whether your drive has a genuine failure. :-(

Maybe you could ask the data recovery experts at HDD Guru:

http://forum.hddguru.com/hard-disk-drives-data-recovery-and-repair-f1.html

[Cantbecanit]

Hi mate, you are suffering the LBA0 fault, follow this guide and the links within it and you should be able to get it going again ok, make sure you update the FW afterwards or it will happen again.

 http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=10810

SD15 is a faulty one, replace it with SD1 or SD1a, I think it's the latter you need.

HTH.

Message Edited by Cantbecanit on 10-29-2009 01:08 AM

[fzabkar]

Hammer, you wrote: " I can run Seatools for windows, but none of the tests pass."

Have you tried the "Set Max Native Address" command?

[fzabkar]

Hammer, you wrote: "I contacted seagate support and they instructed me to update my firmware. I did so, and the drive shows up in Drive Detect with the correct model number and new firmware version SD1A. But the drive still gives all the same errors and shows up at 0gb..."

I have one more idea that may be worth a try.

Seagate's flash utility has an option which is documented as follows:

-w ... SMART Clear Logs

See http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/sf_usage.txt

I wonder if adding this "-w" option to the command line will effectively perform the same function as the fix procedure for the 0 LBA bug.

Let me know if you want to try this.

[The Hammer]

Yeah sure I could give that a try is there anything else you need to tell me in order to do it?

Is there a risk of data loss? (i guess everything im doing has some risk haha)

[fzabkar]

What I am proposing is to reapply the same firmware upgrade that you have already applied, but this time with an option to clear the SMART error logs. I can't see how this could hurt, but in any case I'd like to explain my procedure in order to make you feel comfortable with it. Please bear with me. :-)

This appears to be the firmware upgrade page:

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207951

The CD ISO image for your ST3500320AS model is ...

http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/downloads/firmware/MooseDT-SD1A-2D-8-16-32MB.ISO

... and the Windows Firmware Update Utility is ...

http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/downloads/firmware/ms-sd1a.exe

You can use IsoBuster to extract a 1.44MB floppy disc image (BootImage.img) from the CD ISO:

http://www.isobuster.com/

Then use WinImage to extract the files from BootImage.img:

http://www.winimage.com/

Then extract the flash utility (fdl464.exe), batch file (flash.bat) and firmware image (SD1A2D.LOD) from SD1A2D.ZIP.

The command in flash.bat that performs the actual firmware upgrade is ...

%exe% -m %family% -f %firmware% -i %model1% %options%

This expands to ...

fdl464 -m Moose -f SD1A2D.LOD -i ST3500320AS -s -x -b -v -a 20

Here is what I propose that you do.

When you execute the flash procedure (from a bootable CD), you will be presented with a menu of choices including Download, Scan, Read, Done.

When you see this menu, type Ctrl-C or Ctrl-Break to terminate the batch.

Then type ...

FDL464 -m Moose -f SD1A2D.LOD -i ST3500320AS -s -x -b -v -a 20 -w

This should apply the upgrade, clear the SMART logs, and wait 20 seconds after the download is complete.

The batch file has the following warning:

DO NOT USE CTRL-ALT-DEL!!!!!!
You must power cycle the drive to complete the firmware download.

Hopefully this procedure will work.

If you prefer to try the same thing in Windows, let me know.

BTW, here are the instructions for the FDL464 flash utility:

http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/FLD464_usage.txt

They were extracted from FDL464.EXE after unpacking it with UPX:

http://upx.sourceforge.net/

Message Edited by fzabkar on 30-10-2009 04:30 PM