Probably radio amateurs and novice electronics repairmen who do this for their own pleasure, far from all have a specialized education in electronics – a radio mechanic, a traffic controller, or an electronic engineer. But most of them still somehow have something to do with electrical engineering. 

In my environment there are even electric welders who are engaged in minor electronics repairs, most often consisting in replacing banal swollen capacitors on motherboards and power supplies, and without having the necessary tools or theoretical training. Anything more serious than this can confuse them. Seeing this and remembering yourself at this stage, years after the moment when you made the decision to purposefully study electronics, you see that this decision was correct and knowledge in this area – theory, closely linked to practice, will always be in demand by society. And here’s a prime example of that. 

Some time ago, a familiar electronics engineer gave me a hard drive that was not detected in the BIOS and the computer hung for a minute, at the stage of determining hard drives when the computer started. Googling on the Internet, and the hard drive was Maxtor 500 Gb SATA 2, I found that this problem was relevant for Maxtor and Seagate hard drives released a few years ago.

HDD Maxtor-Seagate

It was connected with a glitch in the BIOS firmware of the hard drive and most of the disks of this problematic series, there were several lines, they required mandatory flashing, otherwise at one point they refused to be detected in the BIOS of the motherboard when the computer started. The problem was that you can flash a hard drive only when it is visible in the BIOS. Like any person who has a programmer, first he climbed to look for a firmware dump, deciding to remove the hard drive board and clinging to a special clip for flashing connected to the programmer, just roll the firmware. 

Clip for flashing the programmer

But here everything was much more complicated: it was impossible to take a firmware dump merged by another user from some other hard drive, even a similar model, and stupidly overwrite the binary firmware file. This method works with any other equipment, such as motherboards, routers (conditionally, I won’t say anything about the same MAC address), monitors, video cards, but is not suitable for flashing hard drives. The fact is that the firmware stores, let’s call them conditionally, calibration data – this is data on the surface of the hard disk, Smart, BAD blocks, mechanics, etc. 

PC3000 Hard Drive Recovery Complex

Therefore, it was unrealistic to reflash a hard drive that was not detected in the BIOS without very expensive special equipment for diagnosing and reanimating hard drives. So at the initial stage, we need our hard drive to at least become visible in the BIOS. To do this, we need to remove the problem that has the name “Fly CC” (SS) among specialists and just IT people. Where did such a name come from?

Error message Fly CC 

The fact is that when connecting to the hard disk terminal using the USB-UART adapter, using the Putty or HyperTerminal program, preinstalled in Windows XP but not included in the Windows 7 distribution, we see a boot interruption and a diagnostic a message that contains the letters “SS”. The text of the message itself is the same as in the screenshot above.

Putty Interface

This means that you are the lucky owner of a hard drive from this problematic series. I will briefly describe (the process was described in detail in a previous article) how to connect a similar USB-UART converter, which is also called USB-TTL. We must necessarily connect the common ground coming from the USB-UART adapter and “cross” the RX and TX pins, connecting RX to TX, and TX to RX. These pins are located on the back of the hard drive case next to the SATA and power connectors.

USB-TTL adapter CH340G

As I already wrote in the last article on the use of this USB-UART adapter, for flashing, or rather controlling the process of flashing the router, we will need to correctly experimentally select the speed of the COM port, usually these are speeds of 33600, 57600, and 115200 Baud (I have not seen other speeds) in console. Otherwise, if the speed is chosen incorrectly, we will see, as in the case of flashing the router, krakozyabry, instead of the usual English text. 

Errors in the console

So, we have correctly configured the console. Correctly selected the desired COM port in the terminal.

Let me remind you that this USB-UART adapter costs only about 40 rubles on Aliexpress and can include various microcircuits, all of which are listed in the previous article. For those who do not have the opportunity to purchase this adapter, there are options for connecting in the console using a Data cable for flashing ancient phones. 

Theoretically (after all, we are electronics engineers, not IT specialists, at least most of us) we can reflash a hard drive without any adapter at all, by matching the RX and TX logic levels coming from the COM port with resistors (power from the COM port I do not recommend taking because of the risk of overloading the port), which are on every ancient system unit. But there is one caveat here, why I do not recommend this method to beginners. 

USB-TTL 3.3 Volts

1. The fact is that we need a strictly 3.3 volt supply voltage from the adapter – no more and no less, and although for safety reasons it is not recommended to take power from the adapter at all, but to use native power from the PC power supply, a deviation in the rating upwards is fraught with failure of our hard drive.
2. The second important point is that the logical levels on the COM port of system units and laptops of different years of manufacture have different voltages – from 7 to 12 volts, if I’m not mistaken, and we will have to select the value of the current-limiting resistor that provides the desired voltage drop using measurements with a multimeter, the received levels of RX and TX, so this method is only suitable for people who can confidently hold a soldering iron in their hands, for everyone else it turns out to be rather advice from the harmful category. 

Gromov programmer

This is the reason that everyone’s favorite (including me) Gromov programmer for MK AVR, assembled several years ago, refuses to work with some relatively modern motherboards and laptops, because by applying standard-value resistors for this circuit, we get logic levels that are too low in voltage, no longer corresponding to a logical unit in voltage, when programming AVR microcontrollers, and accordingly, our programmer issues either a logical zero instead of a unit, or garbage in general, which is not always correctly identified when flashing the microcontroller. 

Firmware code programmer shell

The same garbage when writing firmware to the microcontroller memory, we can get using long unshielded cables or wires, such as COM or LPT for self-made programmers, or already from the programmer to the microcontroller being flashed. For the same reason, when I see on a video, for example on Youtube, wires 30-40 cm long and longer, from a similar USB-UART adapter or a self-made MK AVR or Flash or EEPROM memory programmer, I am surprised at the technical illiteracy of people who do not understand the consequences of their actions. 

Flash memory BIOS DIP-8 package

It’s good if we need to flash a home-made AVR microcontroller one-time, and if we need to reflash the motherboard with a home-made programmer, the BIOS for which it is very difficult to find on the Internet, even on specialized sites, we may lose the chance to restore our motherboard with native firmware if the found dump for some reason will not work. 

Error during MC verification

In this case, it is necessary to verify the saved dump with the firmware in the chip’s memory, although if garbage is written / read, then most likely there may be errors during verification, even with a correctly saved dump. In general, this is best avoided. In the case of the USB-UART adapter , if incomprehensible characters pop up in our terminal, this is just a reason to think about making the connecting wires shorter. 

Long wires from USB-TTL adapter

Someone who has previously dealt with microcontrollers or who has flashed the BIOS before on any technique with any Chinese programmer will say: 30 cm is approximately the standard length of the cable going from the programmer to the microcontroller. The fact is that in such factory cables, if you noticed, there are always more wires than Pins on the programmer block. This is due to the fact that each signal core has a “ground” wire running in parallel with it. 

Differences between IDE cables

This is a professional solution used in computer technology (remember at least IDE cables, 40 and 80 cores, ATA 33, and ATA 66-100 and having the same number of 40 pins) and any other where interference is unacceptable, and allows you to use longer cables and wires without screening. So, now that we have deviated from the topic of the article and analyzed all these nuances, let’s return to our topic again – the process of removing the Fly CC. 

USB to UART connection

Just seeing how schoolchildren and even older people teach the masses in YouTube videos and in articles it is wrong to work with flashing digital circuits – I allowed myself this digression. So, you have a hard drive with a BIOS detection problem: Maxtor or Seagate, hard drives from other manufacturers do not seem to have such problems. 

Hard drive – work in the console

You first need to type in the search a list of models of problematic hard drives, and there are not so many of them, but if your hard drive is one of them, you need to go to the official website of the manufacturer and finally make sure by the serial number of the hard drive that this is exactly your case, and the problem is not related to any other hardware or software failure. The second step should be confirmation in the terminal after connecting the USB-UART adapter and supplying power to the hard drive, the appearance of an inscription containing the letters “CC”. 

Connecting the adapter when flashing

Then you will need to google, depending on your hard drive model and manufacturer, what manipulations you need to make with the hard drive in order to be able to type text in the console. As far as I remember, there are only three or four options. To do this, we will first need to stop the hard drive motor. How can I do that? 

We close the points on the hard drive board

Each subspecies of problematic hard drives has its own methods, in my case it was necessary to close two small nickels, contact pads on the board, in another case it may be necessary to slip a piece of office paper under the contacts going from the control board to the engine (not glossy (!), To avoid closures).

Hard drive model prone to CC fly

After that, it was required to type certain text in the console. Having tried to close these nickels, in my case with platypuses, I realized that this is a dead number and I still have to solder to the nickels with a thin MGTF wire. I tied this wire in a knot and glued it to the hard drive board to a place free from contacts with a drop of hot glue. Because restoring these little nickels is another problem, and tearing them off could be very easy, making one awkward movement in a hurry. To the MGTF wires soldered to the nickels, I connected the jumpers – jumpers “father” and “mother” used in the construction on Arduino. Then it only remained to wait for the right moment after switching on and closing our jumpers to stop the engine. 

Arduino jumpers for adapter

Everything, typing in the console has become possible, half the work is done. Then I found a certain sequence of commands on a specialized site, which one after another had to be entered in the terminal. It was nothing complicated – the only thing is that for each subspecies of boards of problematic hard drives, this sequence was slightly different. At the end of the article, I will give in the archive the full text from the article, according to which the commands were typed, limiting myself here to a brief description of the recovery process, in general terms. 

List of hard drives prone to ts fly

So, we typed a certain sequence of commands and finally received a message that the hard drive has returned to normal, then turn off the power, open our jumper, which can be replaced in principle with anything – any switch, toggle switch or locking button, or at worst, just quickly twisting ends of MGTF wires. That’s it, now we have removed the Fly CC. 

Fly tss on the screw

Now our hard drive should already be visible in the BIOS of the motherboard. What we are convinced of, with bated breath) – were our labors not in vain? We turn on the PC, the hard drive is detected in the BIOS, in my case the boot did not go beyond the BOOTa request, this is understandable – the differences in the PC hardware should have been so. For the sake of interest, I booted from my hard drive, there didn’t even seem to be a password for Windows and all the files were visible, although when there is a desire, even this does not become a problem, connecting a reanimated hard drive as a second one and climbing through other people’s files, nothing of value to myself, however, not found. 

Firmware hard drive from a disk image

But that’s half the battle, the hard drive is still on the verge of risk, as it has an old firmware, problematic, and at any moment everything can happen again. But now it is visible in the BIOS and it will not be difficult to change it, we are looking for a disk image with firmware on which there will no longer be such problems, released specially by the manufacturer. You can take it on the official website or specialized forums. 

Victoria – choose a remap

We enable booting from CD-ROM in the BIOS and select the desired model from the list, and in order to avoid errors, it is better to disable all other hard drives altogether by disconnecting the cable, press: flash our hard drive. And here another possible problem awaits us – after flashing SMART, the hard disk will be clean, which means that we do not write files to unmarked sectors with possible BAD blocks, bad sectors when the hard disk is working, we need to boot from the disk image with the Victoria program or similar, and select scanning and advanced Remap in it. 

Bad blocks when scanning a disk with Victoria

Thus, we will get an idea about the surface and the state of the mechanics of our hard drive, in my case we were very lucky, there was not only a single bad sector, there was not even a single very slow sector – the surface was almost ideal. Here, as they wrote on the forums in topics devoted to the restoration of hard drives, sometimes a very unpleasant surprise awaits us, after flashing in a small percentage of cases there are a lot of BAD blocks, bad sectors, but in my case I was lucky. 

Refurbished Maxtor 500 GB

Now I have a second 500 GB hard drive, on which I took a chance and installed the system, quite a long time has passed and no problems have been noticed in operation. In terms of write / read speed, this hard drive is much superior to the 250 GB hard drive bought new in 2011 at the same time as the computer, also Seagate, but fortunately not from the problematic line. The cost of this hard drive, refurbished used, on the forum of our city is about 1000-1200 rubles, depending on the condition of the surface and the brand, and there were even those who wanted to buy it from me, but remembering the classics, I want to say: you need such a cow yourself 🙂