List of hard drives that can be restored by flashing

Question

Iron

In one store of computers and computer parts, I found stacks of hard drives of various models, volumes, connection forms (SATA / IDE) and form factors (both 2.5 and 3.5), which some service center noted as non-working. Pieces 60-70, different volumes. Today I took one, with a broken SATA connector. I fixed the connector, got an almost new 160 gig disk without bads and other garbage =)
All disks are marked as completely non-working, but, as I see it, this is not entirely true, nevertheless, repairing the connector takes 10 minutes, and the service would definitely handle it. This makes you wonder - did the service try to repair the disks? In addition, there are reasonable suspicions that there are disks that do not work due to equally easily fixable (with UART) firmware problems. Therefore, I want to choose from this heap those that can really be reflashed and then used without fear. Stupidly I can’t take everything, but I can show up there with a laptop and check something on the Seagate website or the like.
So - can you poke your nose at the disk models that had problems with the firmware and which can really be changed using the serial port? From what I have found so far - habrahabr.ru/post/140289 andhabrahabr.ru/post/49514 . But still I would like to find more cases.

Answer 1

In addition to Seagates, there were no more such embarrassments in the foreseeable past. More precisely, there were, but on a smaller scale and without such easy recovery methods. In your case, I think the only real devices that can be repaired are the notorious seagates and disks with burnt electronics (it’s easy to determine - the disk should show absolutely no signs of life, no clicks, no squeak, etc.).
Ps By the way, in the described situation with a completely dead disk, a 12-volt diode is often to blame, go for it.

Answer 2

Try to search or ask this question on rom.by - there are quite harsh guys sitting there that BGA chips are soldered with halogen lamps, and bios are flashed with bicycle wheels.