Private trackers are safe, but I would recommend going to the source, especially with something as important as software for flashing yor drive....
From what I can tell, JF is picking your drive up, and I presume it's in Mode-b as Windows has assigned it a letter...? Device Manager is also your friend here, scan for hardware changes and if the drive is listed, it's in mode b.
Make sure once you get a dump, you check the key is valid (not all 00000's or FFFFF's). I always dump a drive twice when it's the first time I'm flashing it, to make sure the key is the same in each one... If you can get a good dump, you should be able to flash...
One thing I would recommend having a look at (if you can't get JF to play, which I can't for the Hitachis) is Firmware Toolbox. You'll need to get it into Mode-b before you open it, but I find it more reliable than JF...
One thing I would say about the older hits is that if they die on you during the flash, then that's it (bar reprogramming the firmware chip manually by desoldering it, which not many people can/will do). Make sure you have a good dump before you try the flash, at least then if something does go wrong, you have the drive key to spoof another drive in...
It's not a full tut, but I did a walkthrough for someone recently
here. For the older drives, replace RAW dump with Classic, and you'll need to do the same when detecting differences...
I am gonna do a full tut for FWT, I'll nmake a point of doing it this week...
