Question Seagate Archive HDD Failure. No Crash, No Spin, Silent. Troubleshooting Advise…

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needspractice

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I have a Seagate Archive HDD (Seagate (STEB8000100) Expansion Desktop 8TB External Hard Drive HDD – USB 3.0 for PC Laptop). It was in an external enclosure. I have several external hard drives including a WD. I may have accidently used my WD power adapter for my Seagate Archive HDD. Nevertheless, my Seagate Archive HDD is no longer working.

I bought several of these Expansion Drives. I opened another one and it is a Seagate Barracuda instead of a Seagate Archive HDD. I was just hoping to have a Donor for parts but no luck there.

I went ahead and ordered from an online website the exact match PCB boards to see if I can get this hard drive working by myself. I am not looking forward to sending this off to a Data Recovery Service, but I am thinking about it.

If someone could help me troubleshoot this a little beforehand to see if I can get this working without having to send it off that would be greatly appreciated.

Here are my thoughts.

The drive is completely silent, there was never a horrific ending to the drive. Like it is spinning up and crashing, knocking, beeping, whatever. Just one day I plugged it in and nothing.

Now here is the odd part. It seems like something is barely connecting because in keeps connecting and discounting in windows. You hear the Windows Notification that it connects and then disconnects. Sometimes it stays connected and you can see in “Computer Management” under “Disk Management” the drive. It is like it is barely connected on a sub low level.

What will happen is that in “Disk Management” a window will pop up and say you must initialize a disk before Logical Disk Manager can access it. MBR vs GPT. Of course, after doing this, I get the error “The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error”.

Disk 2, red down arrow, Unknown, Not Initialized

Most of the time the partition data or the available space does not show up in disk management, but rarely it does show up, i.e., size of partition and available space to create a disk partition. However, even when that shows up it still gives me the error “The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error”.

My thoughts are that the drive is fully functional, but I may have blown a diode or something. The hard drive was sitting in an enclosure and had an extra PCB Board that was a bridge between the power supply and the hard drive. This other PCB board on the external enclosure is working perfectly. I popped out another Hard Drive from another enclosure used it on the bridge and everything works perfectly. So, I am not sure how the Seagate Archive HDD failed even when the External PCB power supply which held it did not.

This is what leads me to be that somehow the PCB Board is no longer working on the Seagate Archive HDD and this may be a simple solution. I ordered a new PCB Donor Board and was hoping all I must do is transfer the “Bios” and install the new Donor Board and everything works.

My question is troubleshooting.

Before messing around with my vital “Bios” chip. Can I just swap out my Donor Board to just see if power is restored and the drive spins up? I know I will not be able to access the Data however, I would be able to confirm that my other original PCB board is the main culprit. Then proceed to swapping the “Bios” chip on the Donor Board.

Will swapping the PCB board without swapping the “Bios” chip cause any “Data” loss or damage the Seagate Archive HDD?

Troubleshooting Steps

-1 Order Donor PCB Board
-2 Swap Original Board with Donor Board without Swapping Bios Chip
-3 See if Seagate Archive HDD powers on whatsoever, spins, etc.
-4 If powers on and spins up, swap out Bios Chip
-5 If Bios Chip is swapped and drive is still not responsive begin consultation with “Data Recovery Service”.

Another question is do I simply just send this off to a “Data Recovery Service” I would hate to swap out my Bios chip and make it more difficult for them to recover. However, if it is a simple PCB Board Swap and Bios Swap, I would prefer to do it myself.

Please feel free to give me any other pointers. I am just trying to perform some basic troubleshooting tactics before sending this drive off for an expensive recovery. I just have a feeling that this might be as simple as a PCB Board/Bios swap because the drive was never dropped, and in perfect condition. It is not that old either.

Thanks!
 

needspractice

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I found the problem. There is a stuck bit at this location:

Code:
Offset(h) 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F

00025C10  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 00
                                              ^^

When I change the 8 to a 0, the CRC becomes 0x0000. :)

F3RomExplorer is happy with the edit. If you can reprogram your ROM after making the change, then hopefully you will recover your data.

I use HxD (freeware hex editor).

no way, really? How do I make the change? oh use free hxd. let me download it.
 

needspractice

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Feb 6, 2013
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I found the problem. There is a stuck bit at this location:

Code:
Offset(h) 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F

00025C10  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 00
                                              ^^

When I change the 8 to a 0, the CRC becomes 0x0000. :)

F3RomExplorer is happy with the edit. If you can reprogram your ROM after making the change, then hopefully you will recover your data.

I use HxD (freeware hex editor).

FZABKAR

OH MY GOODNESS! YOU ARE AMAZING! YOU DID IT! PRAISE GOD! YOU ARE A SAINT!

2.82 TB - 3,106,287,262,945 BYTES - 748,329 FILES, 57,259 FOLDERS

TAKING (1) DAY TO COPY! IT'S COPYING RIGHT NOW!

YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS MEANS TO ME! THIS WAS MY MAIN BACKUP DRIVE THAT I BACKED EVERYTHING UP TO RIGHT BEFORE IT DIED. I WAS MOVING STUFF AROUND AND PICKED THIS DRIVE TO BACKUP STUFF TOO. I WAS GOING TO ORGANIZE EVERYTHING WHEN I PLUGGED IT IN AND ALL OF A SUDDEN IT WAS GONE.

THIS IS INCREDIBLE!
 

needspractice

Distinguished
Feb 6, 2013
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I found the problem. There is a stuck bit at this location:

Code:
Offset(h) 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F

00025C10  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 00
                                              ^^

When I change the 8 to a 0, the CRC becomes 0x0000. :)

F3RomExplorer is happy with the edit. If you can reprogram your ROM after making the change, then hopefully you will recover your data.

I use HxD (freeware hex editor).

Now, how in the world do I pay you? Digital Currency?
 

needspractice

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Please please please take this as a heads up to have an actual backup routine.

Your data on one single drive, no matter what you're doing at that moment, is not a backup.

I bought (8) 8TB hard drives and put them in an 8 bay enclosure, that good enough?

I had everything backed up on the cloud, but I temporarily deleted it moving it to another service because I was researching companies. This was suppose to be a temporary thing.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
I bought (8) 8TB hard drives and put them in an 8 bay enclosure, that good enough?

I had everything backed up on the cloud, but I temporarily deleted it moving it to another service because I was researching companies. This was suppose to be a temporary thing.
Number of drives is mostly irrelevant.

Actually having more than one copy of your data is the key.
Whether in the cloud, or in that 8 bay, or wherever.

And know how to recover.
 

needspractice

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You have spent lots of money already. If you have any left, please purchase a backup drive. :)

I did buy every donor board online hoping one would work. lol. i knew it wouldn't. However, I am glad i have this really cool ROM Programmer now and a nice rework station. Oh I am so happy I didn't fry my rom, I was so mad at myself.
 
In your case a single bit was flipped from a 0 to a 1. Normally when I see faults like this, I suspect sabotage.

When a flash cell is erased, its status reverts to a 1. I suspect that this one particular cell leaked charge over time and slowly erased itself.

I really don't want any money. Numerous people have offered, but I've always refused. Thanks anyway.
 

needspractice

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In your case a single bit was flipped from a 0 to a 1. Normally when I see faults like this, I suspect sabotage.

When a flash cell is erased, its status reverts to a 1. I suspect that this one particular cell leaked charge over time and slowly erased itself.

I really don't want any money. Numerous people have offered, but I've always refused. Thanks anyway.

Well I'm almost about to cry right now, tears of joy, if there is anything I can do to return the favor, please ask. Not sure if I can do it or not but I will try.

Thank you so very much, you are truly kind person for doing this for me.
 

needspractice

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Everybody in this forum tries to help people to the best of their ability. What goes around, comes around. Someday you will help someone else.

I wish I could help someone like you just helped me. That was amazing. Maybe we can be friends one day and we can talk or message back and fourth or something. One day I will try to repay the favor, oneday.
 

needspractice

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This article states that your ST8000AS0002 is an SMR model:

https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/15/seagate-2-4-and-8tb-barracuda-and-desktop-hdd-smr/

I had earlier compared your ROM against a Barracuda 8TB (ST8000DM004) which also turned out to be an SMR model. I suspect that the second half of the ROM may be used as cache for power loss protection purposes. That would explain the "junk" we were seeing.

So I didn't fry my bios rom? I was able to dump the complete rom and give it to you?

Yea, this is probably a real crappy drive, i mean something cheap. I bought two external seagate drives, one of them had this archive no brand expansion drive which broke, the other one had a barracuda in it and was working fine, the one that was barracuda was green.

So do I need to worry about a virus or something? I mean you said it might be sabotage? No one has touched this drive... Or are you leaning more towards hardware failure?

I AM STILL COPYING. LOL.
 

needspractice

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I think the ROM was OK except for that single bit. It's just my understanding that was wonky. I'm not a pro, just an interested observer, so I only see the ROM data that are uploaded to forums.

Not a pro. Lol. I have seen everything you posted and detailed analysis of all kinds of things on all kinds of forums.

I was very lucky to have found you.

Well for some reason the rom was working and then I plugged it in all of a sudden and nothing maybe that bit was there the whole time. I don't know.

I hope you get paid well in whatever you do.
 
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