Recover old bricked Maxtor/Segate drive

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Paolinop

New Member
Jul 4, 2022
1
0
1
I have a number of old Maxtor/Seagate STM3500418AS drives, very old, small, but with few hours of use.
I wanted to experiment with some different software installations (Unraid, TrueNas, Proxmox, etc) using these disks as storage. It happens that at th moment all the bigger/newer disks are used in other machines.
Most Linux based systems inform that a firmware update is needed. Seagate offers two options, an exe for Windows and an iso that should be burned using a cd. I also tried with a USB thumb drive but it didn't boot.
The former option doesn't work in Windows 11, even completely disabling UAC, so I had to go for the latter.
Unfortunately the machine I used (HP Z800 Workstation) loads the SATA bios if a CD is connected. I didn't notice that... but it turned out that I should have paid attention!
The firmware update process started regularly, but it stuck midway, updating the first drive.
The other disks were spared, but the first in line now is bricked.
Is there any way to force the loading of the firmware in some other way?
The disk is practically worthless, but... 1) I'm intellectually curious if there is a way to revive the disk 2) I can't stand the idea of un-repairable mistakes, I got to find a way to fix it (if such a way exists) :)

I guess it's a topic that could be of some interest to other users who goofed the same way I did

Cheers

Paolo
 
Last edited:

i386

Well-Known Member
Mar 18, 2016
4,241
1,546
113
34
Germany
1) I'm intellectually curious if there is a way to revive the disk
yes there is (that's what expensive recovery companies do...)
- replacing the pcb
- (re)flashing firmware (with vendor specific software/hardware?)
- other magic that probably happens in cleanrooms