2024-04-20

seatools for dos

What should I do for a noisy hard disc drive?

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM02 mins

noisy hard disc drive All of our new Parallel ATA (PATA) hard drives and new Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives are optimized for performance, we do not have a utility that can quiet them down.

While modern drives are extremely quiet, every disc drive makes a certain amount of noise while running. Normally, the faster the drive motor spins, the higher pitched the resulting sound will be.

It is also normal for the drive to make sort of a “chattering” or “clicking” sound while it is reading and writing data.

However, if the sound coming from the area around your drive has recently changed or is an excessive grinding or clanking noise, this may indicate a physical problem with the drive.

Noise from the cooling fans in the power supply are often mistaken as hard drive noise.  To isolate whether the noise is coming from the drive or one of the fans, you can issue a “spin down” command through software.  The Seagate SeaTools for DOS diagnostic has an acoustical spin down test.

If the sound goes away, then the sound was produced by the drive.  If the sound remains, then the drive is not the cause of the sound.

Read More

How to Use SeaTools for DOS to Set the Drive Size

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM03 mins

Seatools For DOS Sometimes it’s necessary to use the SeaTools for DOS software to get the drive back to its native capacity.  For example, if the drive is showing up as a smaller capacity in the BIOS (i.e. 137GB or 32GB) and it’s a computer that should support a drive that large, then this would be a time to set the drive size.

Once booted from the SeaTools for DOS disk the computer should be at screen with a license agreement.

  1. Click “I agree” to the license agreement.
  2. Now choose which drive to set the size of.  Look at the bottom portion of the window to see what drives are listed and what device number they are.  You can see what device is selected by looking in the middle of the screen.  The model number of the drive currently selected is displayed here.  If this is not the current drive click the “D – Drive” button in the upper left until you see the drive you want to test displayed in the middle of the screen.
  3. Click “C – Set Capacity” at the top of the screen.
  4. Click the “R – Reset to Maximum” button.

If you get an OK message in white in the middle of the screen then the process was successful.  Power off the computer for a few seconds and check in the BIOS to check the capacity of the drive again.

If there was a message in red, then this was an error.  Make sure the drive is connected directly to the motherboard and not to a third-party controller card.  If the drive is on a controller card then it’s possible that the set drive size command may not work.  Once it’s connected directly try to go through this procedure again.

Another option is to try a quick zero-fill from the main menu and then to try a C – Set Capacity again.

Read More

Computer crashes when an ATA drive larger than 32 GB is installed

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM06 mins

ATA Hard Drive If your computer crashes once an ATA drive larger than 32GB is installed, it is probable that the capacity of the hard drive is too large for the BIOS to support.

This article and its troubleshooting refer only to ATA drives, as Serial ATA controllers do not have any issues seeing large capacity SATA drives.

Computer systems built prior to October of 1998 (such as Pentium 2 processors and some Pentium 3 processors) typically hang or freeze while auto-detecting large hard disks during system startup.

Common BIOS capacity barriers include 528 MB, 2.1 GB, 8.4 GB, and 32 GB. There are multiple solutions to work around BIOS capacity barriers.

First of all,

  1. turn off your computer
  2. disconnect the ATA and power cables from the large drive

before booting the computer and entering the BIOS, in order to keep the system from hanging.

To allow your system’s hardware to recognize the full capacity of the hard drive, it is recommended that you either

  1. upgrade your system’s BIOS (see the motherboard manufacturer website or contact their technical support department), or
  2. purchase a PCI ATA controller card.  This is the best solution, and these cards are usually inexpensive.

The following steps can allow older systems to access ATA drives of larger capacity.  However, the drive will operate with a reduced capacity.

  1. Create a SeaTools for DOS CD or floppy diskette.  SeaTools for DOS tutorial for help.
  2. Restart and enter the system BIOS to set the drive parameters manually.Entering the system BIOS is usually accomplished by pressing F1, F2, or DEL right after powering the system on. Look for an on-screen message stating which key to press.
    Alternately, the correct key to press may be found in the motherboard documentation.
  3. Set the BIOS parameters for the drive from Auto-Detect to None, or Off.
  4. Save BIOS settings.
  5. Exit setup.
  6. Power the system off.
  7. Reconnect the power and ATA cables.
  8. Insert the SeaTools for DOS CD or floppy diskette.
  9. Power on the computer.
  10. When the system boots to the SeaTools program, press C to set the drive capacity.
  11. If you don’t know the maximum capacity drive your system’s BIOS can handle, press S to set the maximum to 32GB, which is a common limit on older systems. If you do know the maximum, you can press Mto set the limit manually.Once you have changed the capacity for the drive and SeaTools for DOS accepts it, completely power down your system to clear any cached information. If you simply restart without completely powering the computer off first, the drive size changes may be lost.
  12. Power the system back on and enter the system BIOS.
  13. Set the drive parameters back to Auto-Detect.
  14. Save BIOS settings.
  15. Exit setup.
  16. (If necessary) Insert your Windows install CD.
  17. (If necessary) Reboot the computer to launch the normal Windows installation procedures.

Alternate Settings: Steps 1 and 2 above will not work on some system BIOSes. You will notice this if the system still hangs at startup or if SeaTools for DOS is unable to detect the drive after the BIOS settings have have been set to None.
So, try setting the drive’s parameters to a User Definable Type with 1024 cylinders, 16 heads, and 63 sectors.

  1. With the computer’s power off, disconnect the large ATA drive’s cables.
  2. Boot to the BIOS.
  3. Set the LBA to Normal, Standard or Disabled.
  4. Set Write Pre Comp (WpCom) and Landing Zone (LZ) settings to zero.
  5. Save BIOS settings.
  6. Exit setup.
  7. Power the system off.
  8. Reconnect the power and ATA cables of the large drive.
  9. Power the system on.
  10. Reboot the computer to launch the normal Windows installation procedures.

This process will also set the drive to operate at a reduced capacity.  Please remember that the best solution is to connect the drive to PCI ATA controller card, which should solve the system hang problem and also allow the drive to function at full capacity.

Read More

Seatools For DOS Tutorial

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM015 mins

Seatools For Dos SeaTools for DOS is a comprehensive, easy-to-use diagnostic tool that helps you quickly determine what is preventing you from accessing data on your desktop or notebook computer. It includes several tests that will examine the physical media on your Seagate or Maxtor disc drive and any non-Seagate disc drive. This is the walk-through for both the old (text) and new (GUI) version.

In order to use SeaTools for DOS choose to download the floppy diskette version or the bootable CD image version.

Creating a Diskette

For the floppy diskette version you will need one 1.44MB floppy diskette. Click the .EXE file downloaded from the Seagate web site and follow the on-screen instructions.

Creating a CD using the bootable CD image .ISO file.

Just copying the files to a CD will not work; the file must be burned as an image to the CD.

Once the bootable media has been created then boot the computer with the media in the drive. If it doesn’t boot from the media the boot order may need to be adjusted in the computer BIOS.

This document will cover a Graphical and a text version of Seatools for DOS. Find the guide to the graphical version immediately below.

SeaTools for Dos will not detect external drives. Please use SeaTools for Windows to test external drives.

SeaTools for DOS, Graphical version

At bootup, you will see an End User License Agreement:

Image

Simply click “I Accept” to continue.
This will take you to the main menu page.

Image

Under the Basic menu:

  • Short test – Runs a DST test against Seagate drives. If DST is not supported by the drive, Seatools runs a read test. This test takes about 2 minutes.
  • Long test – Runs a full scan of the drive. This is usually used to find and repair bad sectors.
  • Acoustic test – Spins the drive down so you can determine if noise in a system is caused by the drive or by something else.

Image

Advanced Features

  • Set Capacity to 32GB – Limits drive to 32GB for use on Pentium 3 or older systems.
  • Set Capacity manually – Limits drive to a specific number of Logical Block Addresses (LBAs), useful when replacing an unusual drive size in a RAID.
  • Set Capacity to MAX – Used to resize drive to full capacity (does not bypass the limit capacity jumper).
  • Erase Track Zero – Quick Zero fill to erase the data and partitions from a drive. This option requires one second to complete.
  • Timed Erase (10 second, 20 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes) – Handy for when quick zero fill just doesn’t get it all (ie, in case of boot loaders, etc).
  • Full Erase – Fills the entire drive with zeros. It can be used to recover bad sectors and erases all data.  This is not a Secure erase .

Below is the Results and Progress screen:

Image

  1. Model number and Serial number for drive selected.
  2. Drive status and supported features displayed.
  3. POH – Power on hours displayed; and Drive temperature in Celsius.

-Click View log to open the log file once the test is complete (won’t show much more than what is on the screen).

SeaTools for DOS, Text Version

Once you have booted into SeaTools a license agreement will appear.

Image

Read the agreement and press “Y” to accept the terms and continue to the testing or press ‘”N” to exit the program. Use the Page Up and Page Down keys to scroll.

Once you agree to the license terms the testing screen will appear.

Image

See here the varying elements of the old version’s testing screen.

  • D or 0-9 – Switches drives – Select which drive to perform actions on (see device area for correlating number).
  • S – Short test – Runs a Drive Self-Test (DST) test against Seagate drives. (If DST is not supported, Seatools runs a read test). Takes about 2 minutes.
  • L – Long test – Full scan of the drive. Usually used to find and repair bad sectors.
  • Z – Zero Fill – Wipes out the data on the drive. Good for erasing corrupted or unusual partitions. It will erase ALL partitions and data on the drive. Quick and Long options supported.
  • A – Spin down drive (for Acoustic test) – Spins the drive down so you can determine if noise in a system is caused by the drive or by something else.
  • C – Set Capacity – Used to set drive capacity to surpass the common 32GB and 137 GB limits. Also used for drives that get clipped to a lower capacity.
  • V – View log file – Pulls up the log file for review.

Image

The explanation for the multi-colored text near the bottom follows:
White text: The device (ie, Device 0) and its model and serial numbers.
Yellow text: The motherboard chipset.
Aqua text: Whether the motherboard supports 48-bit Logical Block Addressing, and the Maximum LBA for this drive along with its capacity.
Green text: SMART status. If SMART has been tripped, then there is no need to run a test. The drive should be replaced.
Green text: DST (Drive Self Test) support status – If DST is supported it will be used during testing.
Blue text: Operating temperature status – Current and Max registered temp – useful in determining if heat is a factor in drive trouble or drive failure. See Product manual for specified Operating temperature. The Worst Temp refers to the highest temp that the drive has ever experienced in its lifetime.
A common unusual reading displays 253 Celsius, which simply means that the drive does not support the temperature reading feature. It is nothing to worry about.
POH = Power on Hours – Tells how long the drive has been running in its total lifetime.

Acoustic Test

Image

Once activated, the drive will spin down so you can tell if noise is coming from the drive or other components (like a computer fan). The drive will remain spun down until user presses a key.
The Pop-up window will remain open for several seconds until the drive spins back up.

Set Capacity

  • S  – Set 32 GB Capacity: Useful for ATA drives on older motherboards that will lock up if the drive is larger than 32 GB. This solution sets the drive to 32 GB.  If too much capacity is lost, you can consider an add-in ATA controller that can fully support >32 GB.
  • R – Reset to Drive Maximum: Useful for both ATA and SATA drives that have been clipped (either manually or spontaneously) back to its maximum capacity.
  • M – Set Manually: Often useful for ATA and SATA drives as an alternative to attempt if the Reset to Maximum fails. Sometimes used to make all drives in a RAID array have the exact same size (use a specific number of sectors on the drive to set the size).
  • Q – Back to Main Menu.

Zero Fill
Main menu options: Z-Erase Drive is the zero-fill option.

Image

Here is the Zero-fill submenu.

Image

On the Zero Fill sub menu you have the following options:

  • Z – Quick Zero Fill (first 63 sectors of the drive, instantaneous)
  • A – Full Zero Fill (every sector of the drive, may take many hours)
  • F – Timed Zero fill where T adjusts the time.

Drive Information
This is the yellow text seen on the bottom of the main menu screen.

Image

Shows hard drives detected

  • Device number – Used to select which drive to test.
  • Model number
  • SN – Serial Number
  • FW – Firmware revision – Useful on SCSI and SATA products and a few ATA products.
  • Controller – Chipset to which the drive is connected. Useful for some SATA and capacity issues. If it is an old chipset, the 28-bit LBA limit may apply, and so the chipset may only support SATA speeds of 1.5Gb/s.

If a drive does not show up in this area then power off the computer and confirm the drive is installed correctly.
View the installation assistance page for details on configuring various types of drives.

Log File
Log file is stored on boot media if writeable or in memory for the CD version. It is stored as: Serial#.LOG
Ex: 5NF0R4RC.LOG
To view log in software, press V.
To exit log viewer, press the Escape key.

Test Status (during a DST)

Image

During a test the top part of the display shows a progress bar and the middle area shows the results.
After the test is complete, the middle area continues to show the result, and the top goes back to showing command options.

Bad Sector Repair (Long Test)

If bad blocks are found during a long test, a prompt will ask how to proceed.
The screen below appears at the end of the scan or if the user aborts the test if bad sectors have been discovered on the drive.

Example:

Image

Follow the instructions on the screen to proceed.
For further information about SeaTools for DOS view the SeaTools for DOS User Guide.txt file.

Read More