Unbrick My Seagate 7200.11

[chuckygobyebye]

I have a bricked Seagate 7200.11 with HP24 firmware. After a depresssing couple of weeks talking to Seagate and HP support I've had another depressing week talking to Bangkok's data recovery companies. Most are all very keen to take my money but tend to go quiet when I aske them if they have the kit to open a terminal session to a drive.

So anybody know anyone in Bangkok who has the kit to open a teminal session to a bricked drive?

Alternatively, I can give it a go myself if I can find a RS232 to TTLv3 converter (or a USB to TTLv3 converter for that matter). Tried Panthip with no luck and will try the phones section of MBK this week, but if anyone has any better ideas it would save me a bit of time.

[Tywais]

I've designed them for interfacing to my microcontroller designs. If you are moderately handy you can just get a MAX232 and 4 capacitors and slap them together on a piece of perf board or breadboard.

[chuckygobyebye]

I've never actually built an electronics project that worked so...

[phazey]

Tywais solutions sounds do-able. Got a steady hand ?

If there are drawings available, i would'nt mind giving this a go as a hobby project.

[Tywais]

If there are drawings available, i would'nt mind giving this a go as a hobby project.

The signals that say to uC are the TTL level signals. The DB9 is the standard RS232 connection on the PC. The 5 volts (VCC) can come from a 9V battery connected to a 7805 voltage regulator. Of course have no idea what the pin numbers or connector are on the hard drive to connect this to.

[d0ndela]

Might be that I do not completely understand your question (does bricked mean anything specific other than not working?).

Is the hard drive not SATA or IDE interface? If so then why do you need that special cable/connectors? Normal data recovery gear will not work for you or?

[chuckygobyebye]

"Bricked" means its remaining purpose is a doorstop. The firmware's thrown an error, which has caused it to go into failsafe mode to eliminate the risk of data loss (BSY error). If you Google "Seageate 7200.11 firmware" you'll find details of the bug, along with a great deal of cursing.

I do a fair bit of data recovery myself but don't have the kit for this one. As I mentioned above, the data recovery companies I spoke to don't seem to either.