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What’s Level F

Users often encountered the malfunction of Level F, in which the HDD can’t be detected and it will output “F>” in terminal mode. The following pictures are the typical error log.


Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3

A. Error r Reading Reserve Track Defect List

In this case, Reserve Track Defect List is corrupted. The HDD can’t read that list from disk, so it stops initialization and works only on PCB.

B. Error Read App Code

Application Code is damaged, the HDD can’t accomplish basic initialization, and works on PCB only.

C. Application code incompatible with serial flash code

Application code on disk surface is good, but incompatible with serial flash code recorded in ROM chip. This happens when PCB has been replaced or ROM is corrupted causing checksum failure.

Posted in Seagate Data Recovery.

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2 comments

By Harvey – June 30, 2009

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Continuing the Discussion

  1. GC2 & P error in F repair « Data Recovery Story linked to this post on July 16, 2009

    [...] F> repair is a useful, efficient mode to repair drive problem, include bad sector on both Service Area and Data Area, firmware problem and so on. Summarize, F> repair could solve almost all problems for Seagate drive except physical problem. But it will lose all data! So for data recovery, it’s useless. [...]

  2. Depop Head in F> repair for Seagate Drive « Data Recovery Story linked to this post on July 16, 2009

    [...] F> repair is a useful, efficient mode to repair drive problem, include bad sector on both Service Area and Data Area, firmware problem and so on. Summarize, F> repair could solve almost all problems for Seagate drive except physical problem. But it will lose all data! So for data recovery, it’s useless. [...]



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