Dead Seagate HDD - how to proceed?

chigley

chigley

chigley

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Okay so it appears that I'm in the possession of a dead Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB hard drive.

It's a 3.5" SATA II drive which was originally installed in a Mac (don't hate!) and worked for over 2 years, until the drive was suddenly undetectable upon waking the Mac up from sleep (OS X's equivalent of hibernate) a couple of weeks ago.

The Mac will boot with the drive installed, but it's undetected by the system.

It appears that Seagate request that you use their SeaTools software to diagnose the problem. I tried plugging the drive into a PC, and booting from a SeaTools CD, but here's the thing: the PC won't POST while the HDD is plugged in.

I've got no idea if it's even still in warranty (I purchased it on 20th December 2008), or how to go about getting an RMA seeing as I can't even get past a POST to get the SeaTools diagnostic code.

Any advice on how to proceed?

Cheers
 
You could try one of these codes - presumably "No test system available to run SeaTools" would apply to you, or perhaps in your specific case "Apple system cannot run SeaTools".

It does however state: "In most cases, Seagate drives in Apple systems are covered by Apple", and in fact most OEM drives supplied with a pre-built system aren't covered directly by a manufacturer's warranty (you have to refer to the system vendor). I'm not clear from your post if the drive was actually supplied with the Mac, or if you bought it subsequently - if the former, I think when you enter the drive serial number, you'll be politely told to go away, but it's worth a try I suppose. :)
 
CaptainCrash said:
You could try one of these codes - presumably "No test system available to run SeaTools" would apply to you, or perhaps in your specific case "Apple system cannot run SeaTools".

It does however state: "In most cases, Seagate drives in Apple systems are covered by Apple", and in fact most OEM drives supplied with a pre-built system aren't covered directly by a manufacturer's warranty (you have to refer to the system vendor). I'm not clear from your post if the drive was actually supplied with the Mac, or if you bought it subsequently - if the former, I think when you enter the drive serial number, you'll be politely told to go away, but it's worth a try I suppose. :)
Click to expand...

The drive wasn't shipped with a Mac, I bought it separately and installed it myself. In my opinion, the fact that a Mac will boot with the drive installed when a PC won't is irrelevant as far as Seagate are concerned, the main issue is that the drive is dead!

I did think about using one of those codes, but this put me off: "Please be cautious using these Self-Service SeaTools Test Codes. Seagate reserves the right to return a good drive back to its owner and to charge for all associated shipping costs."

Also, I wouldn't be comfortable RMAing the drive with all of my stuff on it either! But there's nothing I can do about that while the drive is dead..

Meh, maybe I should just take a sledgehammer to it and be done with the matter :p
 
Lie say the drive is dead and you have tried it in two different machines (as long as you are sure it is faulty)

I often say stuff is dead it saves a lot of time, obviously you can only say that if the fault if obvious or you might get it back
 
chigley said:
Also, I wouldn't be comfortable RMAing the drive with all of my stuff on it either! But there's nothing I can do about that while the drive is dead..

Meh, maybe I should just take a sledgehammer to it and be done with the matter :p
Click to expand...
To be honest, that's what I'd be inclined to do, and definitely so if the drive had my porn collection, I mean confidential bank details, on it and I wasn't able to securely erase it.

It's a bit annoying, but you've had nearly three years out of it, and HDDs aren't exactly expensive these days.
 
edscdk said:
Lie say the drive is dead and you have tried it in two different machines (as long as you are sure it is faulty)

I often say stuff is dead it saves a lot of time, obviously you can only say that if the fault if obvious or you might get it back
Click to expand...

I might try it in one third machine just to make sure.

What about the data issue though? This knowledgebase article suggests it'd be fine - http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=192027 - but they're bound to say that. I'd much rather my data don't fall into the wrong hands!
 
I had the exact same drive and they were notorious for a firmware bug whereby one day they just won't work and cause the system to not POST or simply not detect the drive.

Seagate were using i365 to do free data recovery for all affected by the bug, unfortunately that was introduced after I had already RMA'd my drive. May be worth a shot asking. However, from your description it's more likely a normal HDD failure (high rate with Seagate in my experience) and if you're worried about data, just keep it, or open it, scratch all the platters, burn it, take a hammer to it etc. 500GB drives are cheap.
 
If you want your data back you will need to do this to clear the BSY error the drive is having (7200.11 and 7200.12 have this problem all sizes, it's a firmware bug this problem), I had the same problem too with one of them drives one day it stopped working and would not show up in the bios too and would make the post very slow or fail.

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/128807-the-solution-for-seagate-720011-hdds/




I used the nokia data cable to do it and got the drive back up and running, you will need an XP based pc to do this on and the cable comes with the drivers and you will need to cut one end off and wire some pins to it, it's very easy to do and follow the instructions on the 1st link the commands and make sure to double check what you type in the hyperterminal program.

This is the cable I purchased and didn't need to add any form of power to it to make it work either, just as in the video wired it up and it was good to go.

http://www.4mobiles.co.uk/products/CA42/ca-42-data-cable.html


Make sure to get the drive up and working 100% (run a full health scan on the drive with the OS) then backup your data, then apply the firmware update seagate has for the drives (mine was up-to date btw and still caused that problem they say they fixed)

This is where you get the update from.. But I would do what I did get the data off it and use it only for not important stuff and not as an OS drive.

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931&NewLang=en
 
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