Just repaired a newer seagate Barracuda LP 2tb drive using the method listed here for the 7200.11rpm drives.

Performed the operation with a home made MAX232 RS232 -> TTL adapter made up from spare parts found lying around at work.

The drive originally crapped out after the PC crashed, Thought it may have been corrupted firmware and tried to update, which worked successfully and updated firmware but did not fix the 0 LBA issue.

I do not fully understand what the commands actually do to the drive but my theory is it wipes and re-detects the available LBA. The command did not wipe data in my case. When i reconnected the drive after it had finished, windows detected it and the data on the spanned partitions (spanned accross another 2tb drive) came back to life with no issues.

Needless to say i will be getting an offline backup very soon

Hope this helps someone else. Saved my ass and my rather large collection of stuff.