I found this forum while looking for a way to reset the smart table on a DiamondMax 23 250GB SATA drive. This drive never gave any problems until I installed DriveSitter Pro & I started getting “imminent failure” warnings.
I read all the posts but being stubborn I carried on searching & eventually found a forum about a
1.5TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 SATA drive with a firmware bug & a method for reviving it to recover the data.
http://www.overclock.net/hard-drives-storage/457286-seagate-bricked-firmware-drive-fix-pics.html
Pages 1 & 19 of this forum give step by step walk throughs.
Part of this fix is to reset the smart table
I found a better explanation of the fault and hardware & programming method at this site.
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/128807-the-solution-for-seagate-720011-hdds/
The part where the PCB is detached from the drive is not necessary for resetting the smart table.
I chose an RS232 to TTL adapter & made a cable to connect to the serial socket on the drive.
I connected the drive to a SATA power lead inside my PC & left the data lead disconnected.
I used my home made 3-wire cable to connect the ground, TX & RX of the adapter to the serial socket on the drive & connected the adapter to an RS232 socket on my PC.
I then booted my PC, when windows finished booting I applied power to the adapter & started HyperTerminal. I used the instructions on the msfn thread to set-up HyperTerminal.
I then used the commands: -
Ctrl+Z this starts a session
And saw the prompt
F3 T>
I then entered
/1 (enter) this enters level 1 (memory control commands)
And the prompt changed to
F3 1>
I then entered
N1 (enter) this resets the smart table
And saw
Smart table reset successful
I then exited HyperTerminal & shut down my PC, then reconnected the harddrive in the normal way.
I used HD Tune Pro to take a snapshot of the smart table before & after so I could compare.
I have definitely reset the table & I no longer get “imminent failure” warnings.
I will now monitor this drive very closely for a few weeks to see if the warnings come back.
I also found a file explaining a lot of Seagate diagnostic commands.
http://files.hddguru.com/download/Datasheets/Seagate/Seagate Diagnostic RS-232 Port/
I must stress this method is for Seagate SATA drives but it makes me think there may be possibilities for other drives. Unfortunately I don’t have any other redundant drives to experiment with but I hope this information may be of use to others wanting to reset smart tables.