Seagate Barracuda 7200.11– a fundamentally new series of hard drives from Seagate, in which the manufacturer tried to combine ATA and SCSI drive production technologies. In the new family, the mechanics were transferred from ATA hard drives, and a significant part of the firmware architecture was rebuilt from Seagate SCSI drives.

However, along with the beneficial effects of the merger, a number of “hereditary” diseases of both ancestors were transferred to the new architecture, with which customers have more than once turned to a computer service for the repair and restoration of hard drives. In particular, this is a problem associated with damage to the translator.

Seagate's desire to quickly release a new product to the market led to the emergence of a series of hard drives with a number of shortcomings and problems. This is why owners of HDD Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 often encounter problems with their hard drives failing.

Barracuda 7200.11 series standard faults

Hard drive is not detected in BIOS

One fine day, the hard drive may start to work slower or even freeze. And after a reboot, it may not be detected in the BIOS, while the hard drive is constantly in the BUSY state.

This HDD malfunction may be caused by the following reasons:

• hardware malfunctions in the HDD (malfunction of the controller board, heads, etc.);
• corruption of service information (SMART, G-List, translator).

If the hard drive's service information is damaged, the management firmware blocks its operation. In this case, the hard drive control terminal displays the error code "LED:000000CC FAddr:0024A051", after which the hard drive stops responding to any external commands (or being detected in the BIOS).

Hard drive repair:

This error can only be eliminated using special equipment for repairing hard drives and data recovery (for example, the PC-3000 complex), through a terminal interface, connecting directly to the HDD and recalculating the translator. As a rule, after this, Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives can work for some time.

There is information on the network that the firmware is to blame, and in order to restore the Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive, it is enough to update the firmware in the hard drive controller. Despite the fact that Seagate has released a microcode update for this model, it will not be possible to reflash a non-working hard drive!

Our tips:

• You need to flash the hard drive before the malfunction occurs.
• If the wizard recommends that you do not change the firmware after data recovery, but change the hard drive, you should listen to his advice. In most cases, after restoring a hard drive, it remains functional, but it can fail at any time.

The hard drive is not detected in the BIOS, but the hard drive capacity is zero

The hard drive is usually displayed correctly in the BIOS (depending on the type of BIOS, it may not be detected, it may be detected incorrectly, or display the message: “HARD DISK ERROR”), but its volume is defined as zero, which means that it is impossible to work with it and appropriate repairs are required and data recovery.

The cause of this malfunction may be:

• destruction of hard disk service information tables (SMART, G-LIST, translator);
• non-native controller board;
• broken contact between the controller board and the HDA.

Hard drive data recovery

is carried out on special equipment and can take from one to several days, since there may be defects (bad blocks) in the user area of ​​the hard drive that prevent the removal of information from them.

What not to do to recover data:

• The main reason is a failure of the “translator”, and not a corruption of the firmware firmware, so trying to update the microcode will lead to nothing.
• Replacing the controller board won't help either.
• If you were promised to update the firmware of your hard drive from SD15 to a newer one on a faulty hard drive, run away from this company.

It is worth noting that such problems occur in the following models:

• Seagate Barracuda 7200.11
  ST3500620AS, ST3500820AS, ST3500320AS, ST3640330AS, ST3750330AS, ST3640530AS, ST31000340AS, ST3750630AS. ST3160813AS, ST3640323AS, ST31500341AS, ST31000333AS, ST3640623AS ST3320613AS, ST3320813AS, ST31500341AS, ST31500341AS, ST31000340AS, ST3750330AS, ST3750630AS, , ST3500320AS, ST3500620AS, ST3500820AS, ST31500341AS, ST31000333AS, ST3640323AS, ST3640623AS, ST3320613AS, ST3320813AS, ST3160813AS, ST31000333AS.
• Seagate Barracuda ES.2
  ST3750330NS, ST3250310NS, ST3500320NS, ST31000340NS, ST3250310NS, ST3750330NS, ST3500320NS, ST3250310NS, ST31000340NS, ST3750330NS, ST3500320NS, ST3250310NS.
• DiamondMax 22
  STM3750330AS, STM3500320AS, STM31000340AS, STM3750330AS, STM3500320AS, STM3320614AS, STM31000334AS, STM3640323AS, STM3160813AS.

Engine jam

A jammed spindle motor shaft is the most common problem that can occur after a hard drive is hit or dropped. If the engine is jammed, then this malfunction can be detected by touch by the characteristic vibration of the HDA when power is applied.

What not to do:

• If you drop your hard drive, do not try to turn it on.
• Do not open the hermetic unit.
• Do not attempt to rotate the discs by hand.
• Replacing the controller board may result in failure of the donor controller.

To recover data(we are not talking about repairs in this case) the entire package of disks must be transferred to the donor HDA. If the magnetic heads are damaged, the block of magnetic heads from the donor disk must be replaced.

In some situations, the problem may be complicated by the bending of the spindle motor shaft, and the impact may cause scuffs to form on the surface of the disk, which will damage the magnetic head unit the first time you turn on the HDD.

Hard disk service information- analogous to a computer operating system. Service information is located in a specially designated place (Service Area, SA), in sectors with negative numbers and is available for work only specialized utilities.
Service information modules are not MBR, not Boot sector, and not MFT, all of the above belongs to the category “user data” and is available for use by any utility that works with the disk bypassing the file system (for example, “sector editor”). The service area of ​​the drive may have its own: a translator, a table of defects, a catalog, etc. (depending on the manufacturer and family).

The service information includes:

Microcode overlays- modules containing a loadable part of the firmware necessary to start the HDD;
Defect sheets: P-List; G-List; Relo-list and others, depending on the manufacturer and architecture;
S.M.A.R.T. and its logs;
Self-test modules, used in disk production
Translator, passport- if there is a separate module, or in the form of superfiles.

Distinctive feature This malfunction is that the disk may or may not be detected correctly in the BIOS. Also, incorrect passport information may also indicate problems in the service area of ​​the drive. Unlike other hard drive faults, for service information faults the manufacturer of the hard drive is of great importance, since differences are found not only in the architecture, but also in the very ideology of service information.

Considering the location of the service area of ​​the drive - on the surface of the magnetic platters, damage to service information may indicate serious problems with the hard drive. Unskilled intervention and rash actions of novice technicians can lead to complete inability to recover data.

Structure of hard disk service information

Critical modules- parts of service information, without which the hard drive will not be able to start and work “logically” (that is, when the user zone becomes available). In turn, critical modules can be either unique (for a specific hard drive instance) or non-unique (the same in families or models).

TO unique modules include: defect lists (especially factory, P-List), translator (if available);
TO non-unique modules include: microcode overlays that are compatible within the family and firmware version.

Important to remember:
Any mistake when working with the service area of ​​a drive is fraught with irreversible consequences. Thus, launching a translator recalculation with someone else’s electronics board can make data recovery impossible.

Damage to critical hard drive modules makes it impossible to start the drive; however, non-unique and critical modules can be selected to be compatible. The situation is much more complicated when unique critical modules are damaged: if you cannot manually collect them from available copies, then restore the data impossible. Also, for some drives there are universal methods for restoring some unique modules, for example, recalculating the Seagate drive translator. But despite such options, solving problems in the service area of ​​a drive is a non-trivial task, because service information on hard drives can be damaged in different ways. There are no uniform methods for recovering data from a hard drive with damaged service information, as well as typical faults; In addition, any modules in the service area of ​​the drive are absolutely equally likely to be damaged.

Recovering data from a hard drive
with damaged service information

To determine ways to solve problems in the service area of ​​the drive, you must first conduct a thorough diagnosis according to the architecture drive. Thus, looking for damage in the translator of drives with dynamic translation (for example, Samsung or Hitachi) is as reckless as recalculating the translator to restore the rated capacity of a Western Digital drive.

Special case No. 1. Seagate 7200.11 drive not detected

The malfunction of the service area of ​​one family of Seagate drives (long out of production), which has become widely known and has become overgrown not only with a “bunch of techniques”, but also with various “one-button panaceas,” still excites the minds of novice technicians.

The essence of the problem:

A disk, for example ST3500320AS, is not detected in the BIOS; on the port where it is connected, the BSY register is set (checked by a program like Victoria), while no extraneous sounds are heard from the containment zone, the disk is spinning.

Fault diagnosis:

As with all Seagate drives, diagnostics are performed via the diagnostic terminal (COM-port). A message appears in the terminal dialog box:

LED:000000CC FAddr:0024A051
LED:000000CC FAddr:0024A051

Of course, slang did not avoid this malfunction, and it was nicknamed the “CC fly” due to the peculiarities of pronunciation of the contents of the terminal. As with other faults, this message in the terminal indicates problems with some part of the service information. In this case, log overflow, and such overflow is often associated with unstable operation of the hard drive or surface defects

Solution to the problem:

Interrupting the initialization process of the drive and subsequent recalculation of the translator taking into account P-List, checking data availability and mandatory sector-by-sector copy to a working drive. The “like in a market kiosk” technique often leads to “forks” in the broadcast (when, starting from a certain LBA, all sectors become unavailable).

Running the automatic translator recalculation procedure on disks of later models that are not susceptible to such problems is not only useless, but also destructive!

Special case No. 2. Western Digital WD20EZRX hard drive is not detected

The essence of the problem:

A disk, for example WD20EZRX, is not detected in the BIOS, but it spins up and does not make any extraneous sounds. Before it finally broke down, the disk slowed down quite a lot, and unsuccessful attempts were made to recover data from it using R-Studio. The signal that it was time to bring the disk to the laboratory was the state of the disk “spinning up, but not detected in the computer’s BIOS.”

Fault diagnosis:

Considering that WD Marvell family drives do not write diagnostic messages to the terminal, the drive is connected via a SATA interface to the PC-3000Express complex. The status registers contain a readiness signal (the DRD and DSC registers are lit); During any operation, including reading the passport, the permanent BSY signal is activated, the engine does not stop, there are no extraneous sounds.

In order to access the service area of ​​the drive, the disk is transferred to technological mode(by installing the appropriate jumpers), which allows you to work with it using a specialized utility. In this mode, access to service information is blocked and the disk is rebooted. An emergency-ready drive (due to the impossibility of reading the service area at false addresses) allows you to load the microcode overlays necessary for working with service information modules into RAM. After reading and diagnosing the service area, the diagnosis was clarified: defects in the service area.

Solution to the problem:

1. Assembling the modules necessary to start broadcasting a faulty drive (unique critical modules), that is, to ensure the ability to export user data to a working drive.

2. Selection of a donor disk compatible (by family, head map and version of the preamplifier-switch) to perform the “hot-swap” procedure.

3. Recording in the service area of ​​the “donor” modules from the “patient” necessary for broadcasting

4. Initialization of start information in the drive’s RAM followed by start on the “patient” HDA

5. Reading information: creating a sector-by-sector copy on a working drive using PC-3000 DataExtractor

The case described in the example of a disk being blocked during independent attempts to recover data is from real daily practice. In this case, the information was completely restored despite 1877 unstable sectors, due to which the HDD was blocked.

In case of any damage to the service area of ​​the hard drive, our laboratory performs sector-by-sector cloning of user data onto a working drive. Only like this approach can give full guarantee and secure data recovery. There are no standard or template solutions for data recovery in case of damage to service information and cannot exist.

Converter

You can buy a converter (USB-TTL and COM-TTL are available for sale) or make it yourself (I provide several diagrams below).

For those who have Arduino: let's connect GND And RESET, use contacts RX And TX.

To check the circuit, you can close RX And TX, - as a result, everything we enter should be returned.

Connection

Connecting RX And TX, as in the figure below, disconnect the SATA cable and connect the power.

To work with the COM port, I used PuTTY, your favorite program will also do the job perfectly. So, open PuTTY, select the connection type Serial, enter the port and other settings:

Speed	38400
Data Bits	8
Stop Bits	1
Parity	None
Flow Control	None

Open a terminal window, click Ctrl+Z and we see the invitation:
F3 T>
To see a list of commands and descriptions for them for your hard drive, you must enter /C, and then Q.

Recovery

It's time to start rebuilding.

Important: Please be careful when entering commands!

1. Let's go to level 1 by entering /1
2. Let's clear S.M.A.R.T. team N1
3. Turn off the power and wait for the engine to stop (~10 sec)
4. Turn on the power and press again Ctrl+Z
5. Clearing the list of bad blocks: enter i4,1,22
6. Repeat points 3-4
7. Enter in the console: m0,2,2,0,0,0,0,22(for hard drives “Made in China” - m0,2,2,22)
8. Let's move on to level 2: /2
9. Stop the engine: enter Z
10. Turn off the power

After all the manipulations, the hard drive began to be detected in the BIOS. To avoid encountering the problem again, update the software on your hard drive. This procedure is quite simple: a boot image is downloaded from the manufacturer’s website and recorded on a disc. Next - download and update the firmware in a step-by-step mode, just follow the instructions on the screen.

Now I have described a situation where everything works as it should, but this rarely happens. The recovery process presented several challenges that I am sure you will also face. Therefore, for everyone who did not succeed, look for a solution in the last section of this article.

About what remains behind the scenes

Since this article is the result of my own experiments based on various materials on HDD recovery, then I will describe the problems that I myself encountered.

Problem	Solution
Console noise	Connect a contact GND to ground on the power supply. I used the wire from the power key. Also pull out the jumper SATA I from the hard drive.
On the screen after pressing Ctrl+Z nothing appears	Most likely not connected correctly RX And TX.
When you turn it on for the first time, an error appears LED:000000CC FAddr:0025BF67 or LED:000000CC FAddr:0024A7E5	First, let's try turning off the heads. To do this, we unscrew the board (at the same time you can clean the contacts with an eraser: I had a lot of dirt there), put an insulator (paper, electrical tape, etc.) on the contacts leading to the heads, and screw the board back (not with all the screws, but so that there is power to the motor). Turn on the power, press Ctrl+Z, enter /2 , Then Z. We are waiting for a message about a successful stop. Spin Down Complete Elapsed Time 0.138 msecs Without turning off the power, unscrew the board, take out our insulator and screw the board back, enter the command to start the engine: U. If the method of disconnecting the heads does not help, you need to close the contacts on the board with sharp tweezers or thin wire. The photo (available via the links below) shows short circuit points on different hard drives.

Artem Makarov aka Robin

09.11.2013

38824 views

Another difficult problem with Seagates, which was solved using the so-called Seagate HDD firmware (microcode loading via interface).

This time, the ST9500325AS laptop HDD is audibly recalibrated when power is applied, hangs in BUSY, and outputs only: to the diagnostic port:

Rst 0x08M

That's all. There is no terminal functionality after startup, as the disk freezes. Before me, the disk was in another place, where the head block was changed (usually this is always the case, if they don’t understand what’s wrong with the hard drive, they immediately change the heads - just in case). Of course, replacing the read/write heads in this situation did not help in any way in restoring user files and the disk was brought to the Hardmaster service center.

The terminal functionality on this line of drives is included in the ROM code by the manufacturer and is turned on after power is applied to the interface. It looks like this:

Rst 0x08M RW cmd 002F req = 18 F0 9F E5 18 F0 9F E5 18 F0 9F E5 18 F0 9F E5 18 F0 9F E5 00 00 A0 E1 opts = 00000000 RW Err = 84150180 ASCII Diag mode F3 T>

Those. servo positioning error, spindle motor stall and readiness in registers ready to respond to terminal requests. In this position, you can use a command to spin the engine, lift the diag ovl from the surface and read from the ATA all the modules described by id, as well as all the modules described in the system volume. All modules were counted without errors, and at first glance did not contain anything seditious that could lead to the drive freezing during normal startup.

Immediately there was a suspicion of a failure in the translation tables, but an attempt to recalculate led to the following result:

Max Wr Retries = 00, Max Rd Retries = 00, Max ECC T-Level = 14, Max Certify Rewrite Retries = 2DF8 DiagError 0000500D User Partition Format Failed - Elapsed Time 0 mins 00 secs R/W Sense 00000002, R/W Error 843200A2 , File Error 00000000 Blk Addr AD6F0001, Blk Addr Type D0, Cyl FFFF0000, Hd EC

Those. ended with an error. After some deliberation, a drastic decision was made. Considering that all the necessary parts of the service information were successfully reserved earlier, I decided to completely format the service area. Having received at the end of the process:

System Partition Format Successful - Elapsed Time 2 mins 00 secs

I distorted the power supply, and the disk came out ready with an “empty” factory passport. In this position, any read/write operation of service information results in a message about unreadiness for the process, due to the lack of “extended” commands in the “basic” ROM microcode.

Unable to load Diag Cmd Processor Overlay

In order to get full functionality in such a situation, you need to write overlays to the surface so that the disk can read them. And in order to be able to write to the surface, the disk must read them earlier. Vicious circle. How to find a way out of this situation?

An option, given that in a situation with a formatted service disk, the disk becomes ready via the interface normally, there is one - using the id92h command, load it into the HDD loader, i.e. a microcode package, including the required overlays, and thereby, as they say, reflash the Seagate hard drive.

After this operation, the translator recalculation completed successfully

Max Wr Retries = 00, Max Rd Retries = 00, Max ECC T-Level = 14, Max Certify Rewrite Retries = 2DF8 User Partition Format Successful - Elapsed Time 0 mins 00 secs

And, the final touch is the recording of the previously saved translator (id2Bh). After reapplying power, the disk produced the usual:

Rst 0x08M (P) SATA Reset

and full access to all LBAs described in the passport. If before the disk came to me, inquisitive hands would not have climbed into the hermetic zone, then with the help of the manipulations described above it would have been possible to repair the hard disk while preserving the information.