Shamil's Blog. Software Engineering Processes, Android, CI, Devops.

I have Maxxtor Diamond  Max 22 500Gb (STM3500320AS model with "mx15" firmware).

The problem this model has is same as in Seagate 7200.11 series: some counters in system area overflow... and microcontroller disables all IO operations to prevent data loss (which is, of course, logicallly thinking, good idea. But the criteria does not seem to be the right). Therefore, all data is stored OK inside bricked HDD. 

Symptops: HDD BUSY led are being turned on during computers seeks for HDD on startup, this process is VERY long and ALWAYS ends with either a message "boot device not found" (if affected HDD is a system one), or system loads, but affected HDD is not detected by the system (at all, not only partitions, but THERE'S NO ANY HDD detected, even with specialized Seagate's Tools, or DriveDetect utils).

This is it, so-called "BSY" failure. The HDD is brick now :-)

Now I've restored my system partition from backup and waiting for my friend to solder the RS232-to-TTL (COM - to - service connector) signal convertor. I've also found the needed Seagate service commands to unbrick the HDD with BSY error.

Please check whether your HDD is affected and in any case: BACK your data UP regularily!

Labels: backup, BSY, error, failure, hdd, maxtor, seagate

Permanent link. Posted by Shamil Gumirov @ 4:17 PM