Please Please Please Help!!!!

[Arik5405]

I have a Seagate 1.5Tb ST31500341AS that is about a month old. It has the CC1H firmware on it.

The problem just started yesterday where the drive shows up in the BIOS and Device Manager but shows 0 bytes as capacity. The drive does not show up in My Computer however. I contacted Seagate and they said it isn't a firmware issue and to send the drive in for replacement. BUT, I have thousands of pictures on there that I just moved over from another hard drive that I no longer have and this broken drive is the only place I have the pictures right now. (I know I should have backed them up right away but I didn't think the drive was going to fail after a month).

I just got off the phone with i365 (Seagate's Data Recovery Company) and found out that they charge $1,700 for Economy recovery or $2,200 for Priority recovery. I laughed at the guy and told him I will never ever buy another Seagate product again. Worst purchase I have ever made.

So, if anyone can please help me out with some suggestions on what I should do and if it's even possible for me to recover the files myself please let me know!

Thanks to anyone in advance for taking the time to respond!

 

[Arik5405]

.

 

[Rebel44]

IIRC Seragate posted info not too long ago that they will pay for data recovery in such cases - just send them another email and ask ifn that data recovery will be for free.

When/if they manage to save your data and send it to you make sure you create at least 2 copies of important data.

Edit: link

 

[Arik5405]

do you have a link or any further information on this? thanks for your help, I really do appreciate it!

 

[JASTECH]

I used software to recover my data but you would have to see the HD in the system for it to work. The information from Rebel44 sound excellent if you can do that. Sorry to hear of your troubles, I am now going to try Hitachi SCSI 15k drives and see if they perform and last longer then my Seagate's. If you or this forum would like I can test the Seagate and Hitachi drives and post results.

Thanks, JASTECH

 

[RebateMonger]

Since the drive is still showing up in the BIOS, you could try one of several data recovery programs.

http://dtidata.com and http://runtime.org offer commercial (supported) programs. If you like the result and want the files they recover, you'll need to pay for the software (less than $100).

 

[Blieb]

Man this sucks ... good luck

 

[JASTECH]

If personal experience is looked for then I will vouch for Runtime. I had to recover 30+GB's on a NTFS drive that had many different data and 1000's of photos. And it was the backup drive as the main drive beat itself up inside.

Thanks, JASTECH

 

[nyker96]

didn't seagate issued a bios update for this drive weeks ago? I flashed my 640gb version with it just to be sure even though it wasn't on their list. listen if it comes up in BIOS, use another comp to burn a BIOS flash CD from seagate. that CD is bootable, I think it will flash the drive for you. There's a good chance it will come back to you after the flash.

http://seagate.custkb.com/seag...earch.jsp?DocId=207957

check out How to burn an .iso image onto a CD link.

 

[Arik5405]

Note: If your drive has CC firmware, your drive is not affected and no further action is required. Attempting to flash the firmware of a drive with CC firmware will result in rendering your drive inoperable.


I flashed the firmware on the drive with CC1H (the same version it had) to see if this helped and it did not. My friend tried using I think it was called Gentoo (a Linux Live) cd to recover the data, but was not successful.

 

[Arik5405]

delete

 

[Rebel44]

You can try to install this firmware: http://seagate.custkb.com/seag...earch.jsp?DocId=207957 - but I am not sure if its H or J version.

 

[Arik5405]

that firmware is SD1B....anyone know what will happen if I apply this to my drive? It won't void my warranty or anything will it? I guess if it doesn't work it isn't like im breaking a good drive or anything lol.

 

[abaez]

I just bought two of these to replace a 750gb and 500gb. I'm gonna keep those around as backup of the backup just in case.

 

[RebateMonger]

I don't know if this is a possible "solution" to the original poster's problem, but it claims to fix drives that report "0 MB" size:

MSFN - The Soltion for Seagate 7200.11 HDDs.