Bricked Firmware on HDD?

C

crABtoad

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 15, 2012
Messages
508
Hey all, trying to do some data recovery for an irl friend right now. I'm experienced system builder/tech, but I've never attempted HDD repair until now.

Have a mechanical HDD that was originally in a USB external caddy, isn't recognized by Windows/Linux (although linux does assign it a UUID), doesn't respond whatsoever under either OS. It pauses POST with a BUSY state, and severely slows down OS loading (probably because it's trying to mount/identify the drive)

The drive sounds like it's running fine mechanically, definitely spins up, no bad clunking sounds.

Drive Information I have:

Seagate Barracuda 3000GB
MODEL: ST3000DM001
PN: 1E6166-570
FW: SC47

PCB Revision/Version: 100687658 REV C

So, I suspect the firmware on the PCB is bricked based on all the tests I've done. I think if I just replace the PCB completely, I will lose some smarts/controller info, and I will lose the contents of the drive itself (I don't know this for sure). I think that replacing the firmware with healthy firmware could fix it, and I saw a kit online but it was for a slightly different Seagate HDD.

Basically at the end of my rope, and looking for some advice on how to proceed with this.

Cheers.
 
toast0 said:
This almost sounds like a problem seagate had with an earlier model. If you want to go down the rabbit hole, you can poke at the uart on the drive. https://sites.google.com/site/seagatefix/Home (discussion of how to use the UART to fix the earlier model problem)
Click to expand...

Definitely food for thought. I'm going to read over this a couple times, ruminate on it, wait to see if anyone else has anything else to offer. I'll probably follow through with this and get a USB to RS232 adapter though. Thank you very much!

E: This part at the end of the guide concerns me a bit:

And do a S.M.A.R.T. erase (create S.M.A.R.T. sector):

F3 1>N1 (enter)

When the prompt comes back up, turn off power to the hard drive, wait a few seconds, then turn it back on. Wait about 20 seconds, then finally do partition regeneration:

F3 T>m0,2,2,0,0,0,0,22 (enter)

After 15-30 seconds, you should see something like:

Max Wr Retries = 00, Max Rd Retries = 00, Max ECC T-Level = 14, Max Certify Rewrite Retries = 00C8

User Partition Format 10% complete, Zone 00, Pass 00, LBA 00004339, ErrCode 00000080, Elapsed Time 0 mins 05 secs

User Partition Format Successful - Elapsed Time 0 mins 05 secs
Click to expand...

Is it just reformatting/repairing the partition table, the drive contents, or some weirder HDD voodoo I'm unfamiliar with?
 
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