Unlocking a Seagate F3 Rosewood

As you may be aware, Seagate F3 Rosewood series drives have special firmware features. As a consequence, they have to be handled differently than other Seagate drives data recovery – otherwise, you could clear the media cache and the data could be lost for ever.

How to unlock a Seagate F3 Rosewood drive for data recovery?

A warning given by Ace Laboratory, the manufacturer of PC3000, mentions that because of its particular features, those trying to recover data from a locked Seagate F3 Rosewood in terminal mode shouldn’t apply Recount translator command in both, ATA or terminal, Clear G-list, Reset S.M.A.R.T  or spare heads in ROM commands.

Steps for unlocking the tech mode of a Seagate F3 Rosewood drive

You need special tools to unlock the tech  mode of the Seagate F3 Rosewood. The first thing you need to do is to switch the power supply on to get the drive is a ready mode which will allow you to then launch the Seagate F3 utility. You will then get the notification that the drive is recognised as a Rosewood family drive. The tech mode is locked so the drive can’t be fully initialised. The manual readings of the drive’s parameters also failed and the terminal mode is unavailable.

Read the ROM dump using the Boot Code mode. The ROM dump is read and stored into the drive’s profile folder. Then unlock the tech mode. Choose the “Tech Mode unlocking preparation (patch)” option. If you select “Yes”, the drive will initialize but it won’t have some high level parts of a microprogramme. If the drive has the encryption, the User Area is encrypted. But if the drive uses the User Area encryption, you need to choose “No”. Write the patched ROM dump into the drive. Repower up the drive and completely unlock the tech mode. Use the unlock tech mode option. The drive is in a ready state. Go to the utility status and initialise the drive’s parameters. As you can see, the drive now allows you to read the Service Area. The terminal is also available. You can now make a service area back up. If you re-power the drive, you need to send the Unlocking command again. The drive will be fully initialised.

Error messages when trying to unlock a Seagate F3 Rosewood

If, when you start trying to repair your Seagate F3 Rosewood drive using Utility, you get an error message saying : ‘’Can not detect SA phys sector size by ATA! Error Error obtaining Phys Sect Size! GetModePage Ox3 err! Tech state Ox72, Ox7200200”, it means that the drive is locked and the physical size of the sector isn’t available.

In order to bypass this, you need to use the COM-port to read the ROM. In order to access it, you need to go to Tools, Utility extensions and click on Work with Flash ROM image file. You should then be able to read the ROM. If the speed is too high and you can’t read the Rom, you will have to lower the speed from 6 000 000 b/s to 921 600 or even lower speed if you can’t still read it. Once you get to the next window, look out for the exclamation mark (!) and select the fifth option down entitled Tech mode unlocking preparation, (patch). A pop up will appear asking you: Force Drive Setup State, “Yes” or “No” – click “No”. If you force drive setup state, it will disable part of the low-level FW services, such as the encryption of the internal data. If you intend to fix the drive at this stage, you need to click “yes”. Otherwise, click “No” even if you have already fixed the drive and if the first sector doesn’t show the partition table.

Once you have pressed No, the log will then say: “Tech mode unlocking preparation, (patch)……: OK”. You can then press apply to save the changes in ROM. You can then switch the on/off button of the Seagate F3 Rosewood to restart it. In the terminal mode, you will see the following message: “Boot Ox80M, Tech Unlock Handshake: Ox2DB3BD0E, Reply”. Choose “Unlock Tech, drive prepared by utility” which will get the drive in a ready state followed by a refresh of the Utility status. You will then have access to the Service Area – but before taking any action, make sure you save the translator and Non Resident G-List in the Service Area and the User Area. You’re done, your Seagate F3 Rosewood is unlocked.

How to return a Seagate F3 Rosewood drive into initial blocked state?

If necessary, it’s possible to return the Seagate F3 Rosewood drive into initial blocked state by removing the patch from the ROM, using the option entitled “Tech Mode (Path) delete”. After doing that, you have to write the ROM again and repower the drive once more. The drive is now locked as it was before the patching and the Terminal is also unavailable.