How to UNBRICK Seagate 7200.11 drives

[astri...@gmail.com]

Although Seagate is repairing (for Free!) those 7200.11 drives
that are bricked, (only show BSY or some other problem where the drive
spins but will not identify) there are probably 1000s of folks out
there with OEM Seagate drives in their PCs. HP, Dell, Acer, etc. are
NOT covering the cost of data recovery and, for some reason, don't
even seem that interested in this problem - offering only drive
replacement as the customer's only covered warranty option.

I just called Seagate about such a problem with an ST3500620AS
from an HP PC. It has HP24 firmware and Seagate claims they do not
have a way to repair it (because of the HP firmware), but will eagerly
take the drive in for PAID data recovery. The tech did admit though,
that a controller card from an unbricked exact replacement would get
the drive working again. Although that plan did not work for my own
personal bricked Seagate 1TB drive, I was very happy to see the
article below about fixing the frimware - in house...

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=128807 (would
someone please archive it permanently - it'll come in handy in the
future as more of these drives show up)

I am ordering all the parts today and will report how it goes...

-cheers from the Great White North!