So pissed right now

[Zach]

I just lost about 1TB of ROMS, ISOs, etc...

Fucking POS Seagate bricked on me and all I did was turn the computer off then turn it on the next day..

Goddamn SD15 Firmware!! Fucking killed the drive before I could update it...


URGH

[ulaoulao]

Oh man, I feel your pain. I'm not trying to give you any false hope here as I dont know your level of skill nor what happened. but I have fixed many of HD's in my day. including two rom disasters. Was it an ext or internal? fat32 or ntfs ?

[Zach]

It's an internal.

Its nothing I can do to be fixed, short of getting hold of a new PCB and trying to replace it.

The actual data is intact, but the drive is inaccessible, and will not communicate with any PC I've tried to connect it to. It still spins up, does a self-check, etc..

[ulaoulao]

Well I like this app
http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/
It wil let you in to a drive even if the firmware is shot and attempt to fix it. You really need to know what you are doing, but its a good last chance fix. There are a lot of help forums out there for mhdd, if you run in to dimitri he knows all.

If it does not see the data then you are truly sol. If it does, Dimiti may know how to get it off. but you would certainly need something to copy it to.


I had a drive fail once like that and I tried to repair the board, needless to say the new board didn't fix it.

[Zach]

The problem is.. The PC cannot see the drive.. Even if its plugged in it looks like. the detection routine will hang/timeout and then proceed on. If you try to boot windows or anything it will be terribly slow until you unplug the drive.

would this utility be able to do anything with that?

[ulaoulao]

Well what your describing is a bad sector on the Boot record or maybe even deeper. And yes it can fix that. It may need a low level reconstruction. This utility will do that but you need the drive details it will ask for.

mhdd is a bit hard to follow as its very technical. Its not windows gui app LOL

I also think it will back up( drive info ) what you have first, if you tell it to.

[Zach]

Honestly didn't expect it to work. So not too dissapointed, but I did give it a try.

No matter what port I tried (out of the 3 that were listed) it just gave me "drive not ready" responses. It was the only drive hooked up to the mobo except for the CD I booted it from. I just unplugged the cables from my other drives but left those cables into the mobo, which I'm guessing is why I got 3 options in the port list..

But either way I tried all ports listed, and nothing but Drive Not Ready.

I just think the firmware has borked the comm board and it either can't communicate anymore, or doesn't know how. I probably wouldn't have lost the drive if I had updated the firmware when I had downloaded it, but I waited and then forgot about it until one day I turn off the PC, turn it on the next, and the drive isn't there anymore..

Even people who so much as reboot Windows have had this happen. It was a big bug with the firmware.

[ulaoulao]

Yup I agree its a bad controller then, sucks man, but was worth a try. If you get an exact match of that controller board it way work like new once again.

[cibomatto2002]

That may sound crazy but do you have another computer that you can put it on it may work who knows.

Can you uninstall the drive then let windows find it again ?

Also can you get the old firmware and try to flash it ?

[Zach]

I don't think you understand..

The controller board is fudged.. It's not that Windows can't see it, its that it can't communicate with the computer period. The BIOS doesn't even detect it. So you can't flash the firmware or anything.

As Ula said, the only solution is either to try replacing the PCB myself (which is beyond my skill since it likely involved precision soldering) or to RMA it and get a new drive as a replacement..

Which isn't even new according to Seagate.. They send refurbs as replacements