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 Post subject: Samsung HD501LJ only briefly recognized by BIOS if frozen
PostPosted: February 24th, 2012, 10:03 
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Joined: February 24th, 2012, 9:32
Posts: 2
Location: Spain
Good day

This is my first post here since I have not found any "Introduce yourself" post anywhere. Please excuse me if there's one. I work as IT technician, although I'm not an HDD recovery PRO nor close to ;) That's just the reason why I need your expert advice.

A couple of days ago my Samsung HD501LJ HDD suddenly started to make a strange sound while I was working with my desktop PC. The sound was similar to the normal "reading" sound (I mean no click or clack, just trrrr, trrr, trrrr,...), although louder, so louder that it caught inmediately my attention. Some seconds later I receive a BSD and has to power off manually the computer.

After the hard reboot, the BIOS doesn't detect the drive, and it makes the same loud noise that sounds like if it where trying to start or something. I repeat the sound has nothing to do with typical "clicks of death" that I have heard before. The sound changes from time to time, I mean, is always the same pattern but every x cycles the "song" changes and start with another "rythym" (sorry, don't know how to explain it better).

I've tried with many HDD utilities, Samsung's Hutil included, but as the BIOS doesn't recognize the drive there's nothing I can do with this software.

Then yesterday I read about the "freeze trick" so I put the drive in the freezer for a couple of hours. When I connected and powered the computer the BIOS could recognize the drive at first and there was no noise on the drive, but just some seconds later the sound started and the drive was again no longer visible by BIOS. I've repeated this twice and both times the BIOS recognizes briefly the drive, but not long enough to allow me access to it nor to run any diagnostics, it is recognized only for some 20-30 seconds.

So the question is, if by freezing the drive the BIOS is at least able to recognize the drive briefly, and the sound is not a click or clack, what kind of problem am I facing here? PCB? Heads?

I have some fairly important info inside that could not be backed up sinde backups were made monthly and the HDD crashed on 20th, so there are 20 days of updated info and work lost.

Please feel free to ask any other info you need, thank you in advance for your answers and please excuse my bad english.

Regards


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 Post subject: Re: Samsung HD501LJ only briefly recognized by BIOS if froze
PostPosted: February 24th, 2012, 11:53 
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Joined: November 6th, 2006, 6:58
Posts: 1752
Hi,

What I think it's happening is that your heads are at each attempt weaker, and if you continue you might make further damage to your heads or even to the media itself.

If you don't try to much times, it could be possible that at least some of the heads are still reading.

If your data is valuable I don't think you have many chances on a DIY job for this case man.


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 Post subject: Re: Samsung HD501LJ only briefly recognized by BIOS if froze
PostPosted: February 25th, 2012, 6:15 
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Joined: September 8th, 2009, 18:21
Posts: 15463
Location: Australia
If you choose to persist with your DIY attempt, and if you think that there may be a thermal fault on the PCB, then you could use freezeer spray to try to narrow it down to a particular component. ISTR a private exchange with a Samsung user who had an intermittent solder joint at an inductor near the preamp pins. It's a long shot ...

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.


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 Post subject: Re: Samsung HD501LJ only briefly recognized by BIOS if froze
PostPosted: February 28th, 2012, 6:15 
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Joined: February 24th, 2012, 9:32
Posts: 2
Location: Spain
Contacted a major Samsung supplier in my area that is now looking for a drive with same Rev and FW (HD501LJ, Rev.A, F/W CR100-12). I plan to change PCB and see if I can access the data. Maybe there is some damage inside now due to freezing (freezed it twice for a couple of hours inside a zipped plastic bag). Data recovery is not so critical now since I've been able to collect most of it from here and there.

If this doesn't work, well, at least I'll have a new drive for backups ;)

Thank you both for your answers, best regards.


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