Maxtor/Seagate users: read this post!
February, 25th 2009
Yesterday evening I came back from work and turned on my PC, but instead of seeing the usual windows loading screen, an horrible "Insert a bootable media" warned me that my 2-months old 500gb hard disk was somehow fucked up...
The first thing I thought was that the MBR was damaged, so I tried to boot from a Knoppix Live CD to see if there was a way to access the hard disk content, at least. Then I noticed that the BIOS wasn't even detecting the hard disk, and it took more time than usual to scan the IDE/SATA devices.
I started a search on google to see if somebody already faced this problem, and found several posts, on Seagate/Maxtor forums, talking about a bad firmware on some models produced in 2008 (only the ones produced in Thailand, as far as I can see) that could lead the drive to hang in a BUSY state (forever!) after a reboot.
Here's a list of the affected drives:
https://apps1.seagate.com/rms_af_srl_chk/
To extract serial number, firmware revision and model type you can use DriveDetect.
If your drive is affected I strongly suggest you to upgrade to the latest firmware possible!
Of course, if your drive is already bricked, you will not be able to upgrade the firmware, but still there is the possibility to "unlock" the BUSY state.
The drive has a serial port which can be used to remove the BUSY flag, you just have to find the right pins and connect with any terminal application using:
Good luck!
The first thing I thought was that the MBR was damaged, so I tried to boot from a Knoppix Live CD to see if there was a way to access the hard disk content, at least. Then I noticed that the BIOS wasn't even detecting the hard disk, and it took more time than usual to scan the IDE/SATA devices.
I started a search on google to see if somebody already faced this problem, and found several posts, on Seagate/Maxtor forums, talking about a bad firmware on some models produced in 2008 (only the ones produced in Thailand, as far as I can see) that could lead the drive to hang in a BUSY state (forever!) after a reboot.
Here's a list of the affected drives:
- Maxtor DiamonMax 22: STM3500320AS, STM3750330AS, STM31000340AS, STM31000334AS, STM3640323AS, STM3320614AS, STM3160813AS.
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.11: ST31000340AS, ST3750330AS, ST3640330AS, ST3500320AS, ST31500341AS, ST31000333AS, ST3640323AS, ST3640623AS, ST3320613AS, ST3320813AS, ST3160813AS
- Seagate Barracuda ES.2: ST31000340NS, ST3750330NS, ST3500320NS, ST3250310NS
https://apps1.seagate.com/rms_af_srl_chk/
To extract serial number, firmware revision and model type you can use DriveDetect.
If your drive is affected I strongly suggest you to upgrade to the latest firmware possible!
Of course, if your drive is already bricked, you will not be able to upgrade the firmware, but still there is the possibility to "unlock" the BUSY state.
The drive has a serial port which can be used to remove the BUSY flag, you just have to find the right pins and connect with any terminal application using:
- Baud Rate: 38400
- Data Bits: 8
- Parity Check: None
- Stop Bits: 1
- Flow Control: None
Good luck!
