Thank You nitrohelix1! And another compatible cable

How To Fix Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 Crashed Firmware:    • Видео   (Video and instructions by nitrohelix1)

Had someone bring me a computer that wouldn't boot, the hard drive wasn't being detected by the BIOS. Turned out the specific model of drive the computer has, a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11, has a flaw in the firmware that causes it to, essentially, brick itself after running for a certain amount of time. Although the data on the drive is unaffected, the firmware that operates the drive crashes during initialization, preventing the drive from being detected.

nitrohelix1 created and posted an awesome video (Link above) telling how to fix this. My customer and I both want to say THANK YOU! Following your instructions, I was able to get the drive working again long enough to Ghost the contents off onto a new drive.

I also wanted to post this video as an FYI to anyone else wanting/needing to perform this same repair. The instructions nitrohelix1 provides recommends using a specific type of cell phone USB sync cable. Unfortunately, I do not have one of those cables, and a time limit on this repair job meant I could not order one. However, I did find something else that works.

A few years ago, I purchased a USB cable from RadioShack that allows me to connect my police scanner to my computer so I can program it without having to manually punch in frequencies. While mulling over the problem with this drive, I remembered that this scanner programming cable is, essentially, a USB-Serial converter just like the cell phone sync cable nitrohelix1 uses in their video.

I didn't want to cut off the end of my cable (Since I still plan on using it to program my scanner), so I found out which pins are which on the connector, and was able to attach some short pigtail wires onto the connector so I could hook it to the header on the dead drive. The connector on the end of the scanner programming cable is identical to a standard stereo headphone connector, with RX being the tip, TX the middle ring, and GND the ring farthest from the tip.

As for a driver for this USB cable...I cannot speak for Windows 7 or Vista, but when I performed this process on Windows XP, it automatically downloaded a driver from Windows Update that worked. So, if you don't have the CD that the USB cable came with, you should still be able to use the cable with the driver that Windows automatically downloads.

After wrapping the pigtail wires around the terminals on my scanner programming cable, I was able to hook it to the ailing drive and follow the instructions provided by nitrohelix1, and get the drive up and running. So, once again, THANK YOU nitrohelix1! And, for those wondering about other cables that will work with this procedure, the USB scanner programming cable from RadioShack will work if you have or can borrow one.

BTW, because of how expensive these cables are at RadioShack ($35 each as of Sept 2011), I don't recommend actually buying one unless you have no choice (Or can find other uses for it), so admittedly this info is really only useful for those who already have one (Like myself) or can borrow one from a friend. If you absolutely MUST buy a cable to perform this repair though...you probably could find a functionally-identical USB scanner programming cable for less online (Not at radioshack.com though!), but you'd actually be better off getting the one nitrohelix1 uses since it is the cheapest alternative.