Hey everyone!

Does anyone of you here know what the size or dimensions are for those small pins found in the jumper-block area of a HDD?

You see I have this SATA HDD from Seagate that I need to repair and to do that I need to wire it's TX and RX pins. I can't possibly solder the wires to these pins, it's practically impossible to carry out, and if you do manage to do it, it will leave marks on the pins or even destroy them. So the best way is to use some jumper wire which has a small pin header on it, but I can't figure out what dimension those headers would need to be. Any ideas?

This is a SATA HDD, and not a PATA which means it does not have many pins in the jumper-block area and the surrounding plastic is very close to the pins which is why it's hard to do any soldering in that tight space. I'm not so familiar with this, but I would guess that the pins on a SATA disk are the same dimensions as on PATA disks. But does anyone know what those dimensions are? I'm pretty sure it's some standard dimension, so anyone familiar with electronics in general should know it.

Example of jumper pins on a PATA HDD:
http://www.doublehammer.com/clinic/images/jumpers.jpg

TIA!

Now, this is my SATA HDD:
http://img8.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=20090410903b.jpg

P.s. Why was I not able to edit my first post?... it said I can't edit it anymore.

Hi,

I think this is easy to solder in 2 wires in this place.
It depends only in the soldering tool and the skills....

Anyway, if you have only one drive to fix, i suggest to use one old ATA-33 cable's wire, simple cut out 2 line, and without blanking it, simple push them into the pins....
This can do what you want.

Cheers,
Janos

No offense but this is probably the easiest part of trying to repair your hard drive. If you're not able to make it happen then I don't know what your plan is for the rest of it.

_________________
You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Thanks for your input N.C.!

• Thanks for reminding me that I have to get going with this.
  
  
• No offense here now, but... otherwise, you're not being of any help here.
  
  
• It's most likely that you have no clue of what the problem is with my HDD, and as such you can't possibly know my plan for the rest of it, just as you said.
  
  
• The reason why I brought up this question is because I have to place an order at the online electronics shop where I will buy all the stuff I will need for this task, and I don't want to order things I don't really need or won't have any use for, that's just an unnecessary expense for me.
  
  
• I chose to place the question here at HDD Guru because I was expecting that some Guru here would know the answer to it. But it turns out I'm wrong, and probably no members or a very few members here at HDD Guru are actual Gurus on HDDs. Because if you are a HDD Guru, then you have to know the answer to this type of question. I am pretty sure I have found the exact answer to my question by now, with even a standard specification reference. But I won't mention any of it just yet. We have to give our HDD Gurus a chance to answer, right?! Two members of this forum answering to this thread is not exactly a very representative selection where the forum consists of some 6600 members, that's not even close to 1 per hundred (1%), it's some parts per million (ppm).
  
  
• The fact that I ask first and then do things only tells what kind of person I am. It means I am ambitious, organized, and methodical which means I act consistently. To you my question may seem as banal or even ridiculous, and in some sense you're probably right. I could probably just wire-wrap those pins actually with regular mounting wire. But then again, the difference between only doing something and doing it right is enormous. The first rules of fixing/repairing anything actually is using the right tools for the right job/purpose, and doing it the right way, and you can't possibly argue with that.
  
  
• No offense, only pure facts.

Off-topic: Hey, what's with this "You can no longer edit or delete that post" message? Why is that? You can't possibly think that this is a good thing? I didn't finish writing my reply to N.C. so I had to edit my post but I was not able to as I am getting the message above when I try to submit the changes. Therefore, I will write it here below.



Thanks for your input N.C.!

I am trained to, and I have been working as a professional electrician, but I am currently changing the course of my career and moving on to engineering, computer engineering actually since I have big interests in computers and the new technologies. So I am currently unemployed engineering student. Through out my education to become electrician, I have been practicing different soldering techniques and even the solder-less techniques, and I have been doing some basic soldering work at home since that. So I think I have pretty good soldering skills, but I admit that I'm not an expert. However, I don't have any good soldering tools for this job. I would probably need one of those tiny little round type soldering irons like the Aouye T-LB or the T-0.5C complemented with a fine soldering station with adjustable temperature. As unemployed, that's just not an option!

As for using ATA-33 flat cable, I admit that I haven't thought about that actually. I think I might have one of those in my toolbox that I could use. Thanks for the idea! However, even if I use that old ATA cable, I still need to order the rest of the stuff I will be needing for this repair work from an online electronics shop and when at it I will order something for this purpose as well.

It's a good bet! However, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be as good if you didn't know those details. Or in other words: you cheated!

I am having the BSY type of error. Still, I have been experiencing some other problems with this HDD as well, one of them being issues with partitioning and partitions table which could cause those specific partitions on that drive to disappear from the file manager on some occasions. But I think that those issues are primarily related to Windows Vista being incompetent when it comes to managing disk drives, rather then the firmware issue of this HDD. I won't go too much into the exact details, but I can tell you that I always primarily use Logical Volume Manager utilities and other system utilities that come built-in to the operating system I am using at the moment simply because those are the best integrated with the system so they are least to be expected to fail or be prone to error. As for Windows I have always been using Microsoft's own Logical Disk Manager utility for all my disk management and partitioning tasks and it always worked out well for me, all until the Logical Disk Manager in Windows Vista decided to freak out on me. I don't dare to use it anymore, now I use third-party software. I am currently using Acronis Disk Director. I don't recommend using PartitionMagic because for one, it is not supported in Windows Vista and doesn't even support the disk volumes that are created with Vista but used on XP, and for two when I was using it to try to fix the mess that Logical Disk Manager made I only ended messing it up even further.

SOmething like this perhaps... http://www.parrot-invent.com/test_leads_clips.htm

You have a 7200.11 with the firmware problem, as that is the only reason that people who have no idea about hard drives and data recovery would be trying to build a terminal adapter. Ever since people released the information we've had no end to the people who don't really know what they're doing and are trying to fix their own stuff but can't figure out how to do it. You're probably not going to find many pros who will be jumping at the chance to walk you through it. It's like calling microsoft for free tech support on a cracked copy of windows.

_________________
You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

This or other such sites may help you.

Hi there!

I just stopped by here again to update you all on the progress of my repair work. I'm proud to report that my Barracuda HDD has been successfully restored! FYI, it's a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 HDD with 500 GB capacity and the SD15 FW. Model number is ST3500320AS. FWIW!

The main problem
The problem with it was that it was locked in the BSY state. I think the problem occurred at some point when I was reading a normal about 40-page PDF file in Adobe Acrobat Pro. Except for the uTorrent client which was bandwidth-limited to about 300 KB/s up-/downspeed, I didn't have any heavy applications running in the background when the Acrobat suddenly started to lag. Since this is not normal on my computer (it's a pretty powerful computer with C2D CPU) I was not so patient with it so I shut it down. When I launched Acrobat Pro again with the same PDF file I had no problem with it. But after reading my PDF and closing down Acrobat, I noticed in Windows Explorer that some or none of the partitions were visible that belong to this particular HDD. This used to happen to me on some rare occasions but was usually re-solved by power cycling the computer. So I re-started my computer just to find out BIOS couldn't see this HDD anymore. I remembered reading some news at some Tech site about Barracuda 7200.11 issues, and after hours of searching the Web that day I soon realized that mine HDD had all the common symptoms of a BSY error case. Talk about destroyed by a PDF file!

The parts and materials needed
Except for few 0.5 mm2 crimp sockets which I purchased at Kjell&Co, I had ordered all the materials and electronic parts I would need for the whole repair work from an online Web shop called Electrokit. For those of you resident in Sweden who stumble upon this thread and who are having this HDD problem, I'm sure you will find Electrokit as a good place to start your quest for the parts and materials. The most hardest thing to find is probably the TTL to RS232 adapter module, or an adapter cable of the same type. Electrokit has the original TTL adapter module by Sparkfun Electronics - the same model that Gradius2 at MSFN used in his recovery guide titled "The Solution for Seagate 7200.11 HDDs, How-to fix 0 LBA and BSY errors". ELFA (one of northern Europe's biggest electronics supplier) also has TTL to RS232 adapters in the form of adapter cables by FTDI. The most commonly used model for this kind of repair work is the TTL-232R-3V3. There is also a 5 Volt version of it, but I recommend using this 3.3 Volt version if you decide to buy this. They also have other TTL parts, just visit ELFA's website and search for TTL. English speaking visitors can use the ELFA website for international visitors.

As for the jumper pin dimensions on SATA HDD's which this thread should be dealing with, I had ordered some jumper wires (a.k.a. patch cords a.k.a. test leads) to use for connecting the TX/RX/GND pins on the jumper-block area of the HDD with the TTL adapter module's TX/RX/GND pins. Both the jumper wires and the TTL adapter module were ordered from Electrokit and made by Sparkfun Electronics (link 1, link2) of US of A.

The jumper wires had female sockets on both ends, but I also ordered a version which had female socket on one end and a stripped wire on the other, and I have ordered a 4-pole screw terminal and a 4-pole pin header terminal for PCB mounting to use with these. I didn't have to use both thou, I only used the screw terminal and soldered it to the TTL module. However, none of the female sockets would fit on the small pins of the HDD. The surrounding plastic was in the way. So in the end I didn't use many or none of these. They only fitted well in the jumper-block area on my PATA HDD. I have remove the plastic from the socket of the jumpers so I could attach them to the SATA HDD. But they were not fitted tightly on the pins, they were very loose so I didn't use them. Instead I made my own jumper wires and the crimp sockets (JST branded) I got fitted perfectly on the HDD pins.

The hardware setup and recovery

Here is what I did.


1. I soldered the 4-pole screw terminal to the TTL adapter module.
   
   
2. I cut and stripped two short pieces of regular mounting wire and screwed one to the GND pin and the other to the Vcc pin on the TTL module.
   
   
3. I cut two longer wires for the TX and RX and attached regular 0.5 mm2 crimp sockets on one of the stripped ends.
   
   
4. Then I isolated the crimp sockets with electrical tape before connecting them to the TX and RX of HDD, and then I screwed the other stripped ends to the TX and RX of the TTL module.
   
   
5. I attached two of the female socket to stripped wire type of jumpers to the CR2032 battery holder in one end and then connected the stripped end with the stripped end of the two short wires for Vcc and GND I previously had made. I used two test leads with crocky clips to connect these to avoid unnecessary electric shots. Twisting them together will work fine too just remember not to put in the battery yet or attaching the power supply (which is even worst from the safety point of view). I just used this simple setup with a battery to power the TTL circuitry.
   
   
6. I placed the battery into the holder and connected everything and it was ready for use.

The aftermath
The only issue in this whole procedure was that the RX and TX wires were flipped (RX to RX and TX to TX) so I didn't get any response in the terminal. But after swapping them I got to the command prompt in terminal ans successfully recovered the HDD and it was recognized in BIOS. I upgraded the FW from SD15 to SD1A successfully. This HDD problem occurred exactly on Wednesday of April the first (2009-04-01), and I had it all solved on Monday of April the 20th (2009-04-20). So it was all solved within about three weeks. That's not so bad I think. If I had to send the HDD to i365 UK (a Seagate company) as Seagate Technical Support has suggested I might have lost my data forever. I don't care much about the HDD as much as I care about the data - that's the part that matters to people. I have spent 716 SEK (~64 EUR or 83 USD) on parts, materials and tools for recovering my HDD. But to me, it was worth it. I don't think I would have gotten away cheaper if I had went to a "professional" DR company, it would probably be at least eight times the price, in best case. I base this on the information from the user called Alexx at the MSFN thread above who lives in Sweden and had called around to local DR companies to ask for prices. But even if it would have been cheaper to go to a DR company, I still wouldn't do it. I enjoyed doing it myself, and what's more I have gained knowledge in the process.

The HDD jumper pin dimensions
I probably didn't need to be this paranoid about the jumper pin dimensions, but I didn't want to risk anything. Since I have recovered my HDD I have done some research and I also chatted with Seagate Technical Support. According to Quincy T who I chatted with, the pin pitch should be 2 mm for SATA HDD's. He was unsure of the thickness, but he said that all 2 mm jumpers are uniform so there's only one thickness. He linked me to an Knowledge Base article at Seagate's site.

Here is a table of common unit conversions we have done between inches and millimeters. I have verified that they all are correct.

Here is the product description for the Sparkfun Electronics jumper wires.

Here is another product description for a "2 Pin .100" Header Connector - Single Row" at MCI Electronics. This is the pin header that Gradius2 at MSFN had ordered. These are supposed to be attached to a wire, it's the same thing as the ones I purchased (by JST), mine had just red plastic not black. But I remember that he also wrote in his guide that he wasn't able to fit these onto the HDD pins because of the plastics being in way.

Here is one last product description for a shortening jumper by Hsuan Mao I found at ELFA's website.

What these details reveal is that the most common pin pitch of a PCB type of header is 2.54 mm and would require a jumper wire with the same header pitch. Expressed in inches gives a value of 0.1. If the pitch is 2.54 mm then the thickness would normally be 0.64 mm, or approx. 0.0252 expressed in inches. So, 2.54 mm pitch gives a 0.64 mm thickness. These are the jumper/socket dimensions you would normally find on most common CPB boards, and they fit perfectly on the jumper pins of PATA HDD's. However, they do not fit as got (if at all) on the jumper pins of SATA HDD's because they have 2 mm pitch. If 2 mm is the exact pitch and not an approximation of 2.54 mm (how could it be) then these may be just a slightly thinner then their 0.64 mm counterparts used on PATA HDD's. And that! Is the whole problem and the main reason why I popped this question in first place.

It's a pity that neither the jumper wire headers nor the header connectors with crimp sockets which you use to make your own jumper wires do fit inside that tiny little space on the back of SATA HDD's. I remember reading at MSFN in the solution thread by Gradius2 that some users used a Dremel tool to file down the plastics so that it would fit. Well, what can I say, you got to use your imagination if you're ever going to make those fit inside on the jumper-block area of a SATA HDD.

Why is this? What's their problem (HDD manufacturers)? Why did they make the jumper-block area so tiny on SATA HDD's compared to PATA? I understand that SATA compared to PATA drives do not need to be configured to Master vs. Slave so they don't have as many pins as PATA drives, they only got the Capacity limit pins. But they could still have made some more space there. I remember that I once lost one of those tiny tiny little Cap. limit shortening jumpers for a SATA HDD so I purchased a set of PC screws, distances and shortening jumpers from 3M. But the damn thing wouldn't fit on that SATA HDD, it fitted barely so that it could shorten the pins. So it did work but barely, and I had to use force to get it in place and pilers to get it out. Most people would probably be satisfied with that but I'm addicted to details and I'm not at all satisfied with it. Oh, and by the way, one Barracuda 7200.11 owner reported in the MSFN thread by Gradius2 that he was unable to RMA his drive because a tiny little bit of plastic in the SATA Power connector area was broken so they said the warranty was due. So there you go, details do matter, and it's the details that make up the whole product.

FWIW, I have recently found a data sheet document for a patch cord by Hirschmann at ELFA's website which reveal quite interesting details about this type of PCB miniature connectors. It includes references to standard specifications. In this document it is said that the thickness of this type of connectors are 0.64 mm up to 2 mm. I think there is one even thinner which is 0.5 mm, but I was unable to confirm that. That might just be the one used on SATA HDD's, and that may be the reason why 0.64 mm sockets don't fit so good on 0.5 mm pins.


Afterword
I have by now probably already told you more than necessary or more then you want or need to know. I could of course go ahead and chop this post down in half. But since I have already put up the effort to write it, I'm going to leave it as is and let you decide what part and how much you want to read. I have tried to get a good disposition so it would be easy to read, I hope I did well there. My initial thought with this thread was to just drop my question and hopefully get the answer to it. But since no one really seemed to know the answer, it has evolved into this general discussion of HDD's and repairing HDD's. It's of course not forbidden to discuss a problem from a different point of view if you can't crack the core of it. I think it's interesting to see how much there is to be said about such a tiny little thing as a HDD jumper pin, and how many new questions it brings up. Well, I hope you're not bothered by this long post of mine and that you enjoyed reading it as much I enjoyed writing it.

Reference
Seagate Tech Support - Shot 1
Seagate Tech Support - Shot 2
Seagate Tech Support - Shot 3
Seagate Tech Support - Shot 4
Seagate Tech Support - Shot 5
Seagate Tech Support - Shot 6

P.s. Based upon the knowledge I have gained in my recent experience with this Barracuda HDD I am currently writing a new guide for recovering the 7200.11 Barracudas from the, by now, well known BSY or LBA=0 error. I hope it will be better then those currently available by taking into account the details that other such guides leave out, and by clearing out the "black cloud of confusion" surrounding the whole topic as I once described it in the MDFN thread by Gradius2. I will publish it on MSFN as soon it is ready, but I don't want to challenge any body else's work, and especially not that done by Gradius'. I just want to make an improved version of the existing ones, and unlike Gradius I will be glad to hear other peoples feedback and input, and to give credit to those who deserve it.

Hi ElectroGeeza ....thank you for spending time writing these, much appreciated your contribution here.....have this oIo , if you dont know what this is oIo...then ask BlackST about it.

WOW, somebody sure has a lot of free time to write so much!

Good job on recovering your data, I just hope your next posts are shorter, I may actually read them then!!

Now that is called pure bullshit!
Seagate offers free replacement of any defective drive, but for this perticular model, seagate offers a "Free Data Recovery" too. It mean, it will not send you just a blank drive, but a drive with all your data.

And Second:
With all due respect, I would like to point out, that you got stuck in your own words in trying to promote all this. You want to say, that you "Updated" your firmware through terminal and revived the drive. If so, then I would really really love to know the procedure to actually "Update" the firmware on a 7200.11 via terminal....

(Hey, I ain't BlackST's clone..I am just his fan)

_________________
I just hate spammers...It was a Spammer, who ruined my life!

According to Seagate, it's a firmware error. It was nothing to do with the PDF file. If you do thing 'A', then thing 'B' happens, that does not prove that 'A' caused 'B' ...