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Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
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Dead Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS

November 11th, 2010, 6:09

Hi

I am hoping someone can help or give advice on my dead drive.

It's a 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS with the SD15 firmware. It was the main bootable drive in my machine and was working fine (No error messages) until it died a few weeks ago.

The drive is not recognised in the BIOS at all. When power is put to the drive it spins up, I can hear 12 clicks and then it spins down. The time from starting to spin up to spinning down is 20 seconds.

At first I thought it was victim to the BSY firmware problem but now I am not so sure as I understand that the drive spins ok and constantly if it has this problem and my drive does not.

I am posting here after not having much luck on the Seagate forums and hope someone here can help me recover some data from the drive either by giving some advice or by pointing me in the right direction.

If you need any further info please ask and I will try and supply it.

Regards
John

Re: Dead Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS

November 11th, 2010, 16:54

Anyone?

Anyone have any idea what might be wrong or what I can do to either get the drive working or recover the data?

Re: Dead Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS

November 11th, 2010, 17:06

Take it to a pro for diagnosis... probably heads or platter damage

Re: Dead Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS

November 12th, 2010, 3:01

john1802 wrote:It's a 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS with the SD15 firmware.

The drive is not recognised in the BIOS at all. When power is put to the drive it spins up, I can hear 12 clicks and then it spins down.

At first I thought it was victim to the BSY firmware problem but now I am not so sure as I understand that the drive spins ok and constantly if it has this problem and my drive does not.

ISTR that someone successfully applied the DIY BSY fix to a clicking drive. You may like to ask Seagate if they will provide free data recovery in your case.

Re: Dead Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS

November 12th, 2010, 3:34

I have known the BSY fix work on drives that click-spindown-spinup-click...... continuously.

Very rare, but it HAS happened.

But never on one that clicks, spins down and stays spun down.

Agree with drc on this one.

Re: Dead Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS

November 12th, 2010, 5:47

To me is 100% HS/SA/crash problem - only proper and COMPLETE diagnose can sort what kind of problem is.

Re: Dead Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS

November 13th, 2010, 3:48

I have had 6 of these drives in this week, all presented as BSY problem, all had very high reallocated sector counts, all had multiple bad sectors. 2 failed in first 20 minutes of cloning (head 2 errored up, I turned it off, then lost head 3, about 2 minutes later all heads bad and clicking on startup, opened in cleanroom ringed all platters!

This is new 7200.11 problem that we are seeing (actually a combination or other problems).

We are now seeing drives failing very quickly (bad sectors probably from platter surface breaking done due to overheating is my hypothsis).
That rapid failure triggers the BSY bug if not at the first counter trigger at one of the subsequent 256 repeats. Due to the rapid failure mode, the drive triggers BSY quickly.

Using PC3000 to reset BSY, flashing on new firmware, drive normally comes good, viewing smart shows thousands of reallocated sectors.
Start cloning on DDI shows up bad sectors very quickly and the drive deteriorates quickly.

We are now setting up in DE and just ripping the critical stuff via translator, then getting what ever we can.
Watch out for the 7200.11, we no longer just repair and return, we do full Recoveries on them, then recommend warranty replacement.

Re: Dead Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS

November 13th, 2010, 6:50

BadMac wrote:I have had 6 of these drives in this week, all presented as BSY problem, all had very high reallocated sector counts, all had multiple bad sectors. 2 failed in first 20 minutes of cloning (head 2 errored up, I turned it off, then lost head 3, about 2 minutes later all heads bad and clicking on startup, opened in cleanroom ringed all platters!

This is new 7200.11 problem that we are seeing (actually a combination or other problems).

We are now seeing drives failing very quickly (bad sectors probably from platter surface breaking done due to overheating is my hypothsis).
That rapid failure triggers the BSY bug if not at the first counter trigger at one of the subsequent 256 repeats. Due to the rapid failure mode, the drive triggers BSY quickly.

Using PC3000 to reset BSY, flashing on new firmware, drive normally comes good, viewing smart shows thousands of reallocated sectors.
Start cloning on DDI shows up bad sectors very quickly and the drive deteriorates quickly.

We are now setting up in DE and just ripping the critical stuff via translator, then getting what ever we can.
Watch out for the 7200.11, we no longer just repair and return, we do full Recoveries on them, then recommend warranty replacement.

'ringed platters' means that the head 'touched' the platter?
I always thought that wouldn't be possible, unless the drive stops spinning and the head's hadn't be moved into the landing zone?
Does the drive get so hot that the heads get 'loose'?

I'm mostly asking as my 7200.11 got a bit warm running just in hyperterminal (maybe 10-15deg above room?).. once connected to the sata port it didn't got that warm.. and now it's on it's way to DR. Should I mention this point to them?

Re: Dead Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS

November 13th, 2010, 13:22

Ringed platter = head broke and the remaining part of the HGA engraved the surface.

Needless to say that if one/more head were failing or there were symptoms of crash, SMART triggers (usually there is time to alert before catastrophical failure) and in many case the drive gets bricked. It is still possible to diagnose what's going on, especially failing heads or symptoms of mechanical failure AND safely get data BEFORE the disaster. But it is beyond "average joe".

Of course if you follow idiot advice you *may* make the drive work again for unpredictable time, but the damage continues then the disaster come.

Re: Dead Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS

November 15th, 2010, 10:36

OK, It looks like I am going to have to go down the data recovery route in order to recover the data from my drive. I do have some concerns about my personal data and the privacy of that data.

I don't think I am keen on sending the drive away for days/weeks to have the recovery done. I'd much rather have it done while I wait if that is at all possible? I will have to have a hunt round here in the UK to see if anywhere does this service while you wait. does anyone know anyone/anywhere that can look at this drive for me and possibly recover the data?

Re: Dead Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS

November 15th, 2010, 10:39

john1802 wrote:I'd much rather have it done while I wait if that is at all possible?

It's not going to be something that only takes a few minutes. Even if your drive was completely fine and required no work at all it would take hours to image it and then copy to some other media.

Re: Dead Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS

November 15th, 2010, 11:05

Yeah I suppose I am being unrealistic. :(

Re: Dead Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS

November 15th, 2010, 12:41

john1802 wrote:Yeah I suppose I am being unrealistic. :(

Yes I am sorry you are. One drive took me 45 days to image with really bad sectors on it. I do not think I would want you sitting around here and waiting on your recovery job to finish up.

PCImage is a professional and he is in UK. He and all who do DR work are responsible for the safety of your data. No DR company would ever allow your data to fall into the hands of someone else. Plus please consider that all the jobs that DR companies do. Do you actually think they have time to go through all your data and read and see what you have on your HDD?

If you take this to a real professional in this field they will have the safety of your data in mind at all time the drive is in their shop.

Re: Dead Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS

November 15th, 2010, 13:28

Thanks for the comments. I think it will have to wait for the time being but as soon as I can I think I will send it to a pro to see what can be done.

Re: Dead Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS

December 15th, 2010, 7:46

Hi, I have a similar problem with a ST3500320AS which died on me last night. I can hear it spinning OK so doesn't seem anything wrong with it physically. I think it's only the SD15 firmware bug. Needless to say, I've tried to connect it to another device, also via USB. No luck. It's bricked.
I have data on the drive which I need to recover, the HDD is still under warranty (I bought it almost 3 years ago, it has 5 year warranty) but it's OEM. Does Seagate offer free data recovery in this case? (I've read on some forums they were doing it) or they just RMA it?
Otherwise, where can I go and restore the drive? I know about the DYI solution but I don't want to risk it myself. Can you recommend somebody specialised in these kind of faults? How much will it cost?
Another thing I was thinking about would be to buy an identical model and use that PCB on my drive. Will that do the trick? I just don't want to damage the data, it's personal stuff I've been archiving for the last year or so...
Thank you,
Radu

Re: Dead Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS

December 15th, 2010, 9:35

Hi
I would recommend Sean aka pcimage user on this forum...Try to send him a PM .
Rgds

Re: Dead Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS

December 19th, 2010, 7:01

This is quite interesting.

I just recovered a friend's 1TB drive from the SD15 BSY error, however I did not get any reallocated sector SMART errors after upgrade to SD1A as others have done.

Do you think his drive is OK or no good?
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